Here Comes a Candle
by Robin Sparrow
Summary: Sequel to Sixty-Six and Feelings. Kate and Barry take an unexpected detour to the town of Silent Hill. Does not require extensive knowledge of either FMA or SH to enjoy, just read the author's notes. Rated M for horror violence and gore. Complete.
1. Caught in Monochrome Dreams

I promised myself I would stick to one-shots from now on... So much for that. Anyway, the return (again!) of Kate and Barry, this time in a special Halloween special of specialness! Here I have combined two of my loves in one: _FMA_ and _Silent Hill!_ I realize this means this story will appeal mostly to a smaller, more select group of people, but let me mention before you begin reading**: you can probably read this with only a general sense of what _Silent Hill_ (or indeed, even _FullMetal Alchemist_) is about.** Although of course being a fan of both is best, as long as you know that the town of Silent Hill is living proof that "fear is a place," and as long as you've read my previous fics in this series, "Sixty-Six" and "Feelings," you can probably still enjoy this story. No guarantees, though. :P

That being said, I need to make **a quick note about the universe** in which this story is set. Since this is an odd crossover, you're just going to have to accept that somehow you can get to Silent Hill from Amestris. Perhaps it supernaturally manifested itself there, or perhaps this is simply an AU Amestrisized version of the original town... I'll leave that decision up to you. Also, although I love the series in general, **this fic is primarily inspired by _Silent Hill 2_**, in that the Order/Alyssa/God thing is pretty much discounted here; instead, the monsters and screwy manifestations that occur in the town are all psychologically tied to the characters that have been drawn there - in this case, that's Kate and Barry. This does NOT mean that they are hallucinations; the idea here is that the town itself takes a person's fears, traumas, issues, etc., and turns them into something real - and really horrifying.

Also... to my fellow _FMA_ fans and Risembool Rangers, I apologize, as in spite of being a crossover this fic is really more slanted toward the _Silent Hill_ side rather than the _FMA_ side. The entire fic will be taking place in the town... that's the whole point of the story. But I will do my best to include as many fun little references and crossover moments as possible, to keep things semi-balanced.

Finally... I have been inspired by Valadilenne's Hatter/Alic fanfic "Sunny Disposish" (you can find it on DeviantArt): for the first time, **I am posting a chapter commentary at the end of each chapter.** It is not necessary to read this; rather, this is simply my chance to share with you my little notes and point out details and references which you might have missed while reading the chapter initially. (For example, I may use in-text quotes, without naming them as such; in the chapter commentary, I will explain where the line came from, etc.) Primarily I will be focusing on any Silent Hill stuff that needs explaining, as I know readers of the previous fics will generally be FMA fans who may or may not have knowledge about the game.

And now, without further adieu... enjoy! And by the way: HAPPY FMA DAY EVERYONE!

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing except Kate and my monster concepts (and that only to a certain extent). Everything else belongs to Arakawa and Konami.

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><p><strong>Chapter 1: Caught in Monochrome Dreams<strong>

_"I have never felt an emptiness of self like I did right then and I never will forget that feeling. It was like I crossed over into a realm I could never come back from." – David Gore_

Kate felt like she was pushing through curtain after curtain of a thick fog which had been draped heavy and cold over the hallways of her consciousness. The farther she went, the closer the light in the distance got, and she pushed harder, shoving aside the enveloping mist to make her way back to the surface. She emerged at last with a long, deep breath, taking the chilled air in slowly as her eyes opened.

Looking up through the windshield of her car, she saw a dark, blurry, colorless world which differed little from the fogginess in her mind, and made even less sense. She had never been here before, she was sure of it, and she had no idea how she had come to be in such a place now. The last thing she remembered was getting into her car and taking the road east, heading for Liore, with Barry sitting next to her…

"Barry!" She sat bolt upright, looking round wildly for her companion. But the passenger's seat was empty, and the door slightly ajar; glancing over her shoulder at the vacant backseat confirmed what she already knew: he was gone. But where?

She noticed what looked like a parking ticket lying on the dashboard; picking it up, she saw that someone had written the following on the back: _Have I caught my __heav'nly jewel,/__Teaching sleep most fair to be?/Now will I teach her that she,/When she wakes, is too, too cruel._

She stared at it for a long moment._ What the hell?_

Shaking her head in a vain attempt to clear it, she pushed open her door and got out, wincing a little as she stretched stiff limbs. After locking up the doors on both sides of the car, she stepped back to take a second look around, trying hard to remember what had led to her current situation.

The first thing she noticed was the skid marks on the road behind the car. The area was weakly illuminated by the dim neon sign of the nearby building, a cheap roadside diner. She saw now that it was a miracle she hadn't hit the fire hydrant sitting mere inches away from the hood; clearly, she hadn't parked here in a calm state of mind. She figured she must have swerved to avoid hitting something, perhaps a child chasing after a ball or a stray dog…

No, she would remember that, wouldn't she? She hadn't hit anything, and a quick check of her reflection in the car window proved she didn't have head trauma as an excuse for amnesia. But the question, then, was how she had ended up unconscious and alone in her car, if she had not been knocked out.

Unless… She glanced again at the tire tracks on the ground, then at the car. Little shards of memory came back to her, bit by bit, from the car ride that had somehow come to an end in this unfamiliar destination. She and Barry had risen early in the morning to pack everything away before they left; she remembered complaining about how she should have grabbed a second cup of coffee at that café they had stopped at for lunch. Barry knew how to drive, of course, but Kate had been reluctant to turn the wheel over to him, afraid he would decide that running over some poor pedestrian "by accident" would be a nice diversion from the monotony of the trip. She remembered yawning, a lot, as afternoon began to drag on towards evening…

_Oh, fantastic,_ she realized. _I fell asleep at the wheel._ No wonder she could not remember arriving here; she had driven into town in her sleep. _Like sleepwalking, only horribly dangerous._ She made a mental note to herself to thank Barry when she found him again; it was no doubt his doing that they had come to a safe stop at last.

She looked around. The streets were completely empty; it was a creepy feeling, standing alone in the fog, and for a moment she fancied she was the only living person in the entire town. She shook it off, and chuckled at her own paranoia as she climbed back into her car.

But when she inserted the key into the ignition, something peculiar happened. She noticed the radio first; none of the stations worked. Each turn of the tuning dial only turned up more dead air, or the occasional spat of white noise. Worse, when she tried to actually start the car, the engine sputtered and shuddered and hacked and coughed like it was suffering from a dreadful case of emphysema, despite running perfectly smoothly earlier. Getting back out, she lifted the hood and checked the parts; everything looked clean._ What is going on here?_ she thought irritably, sitting back down to try again, only to find the results were the same. With a grunt, she shut the door and locked it, and stared hard at the automobile, as though by glaring alone she could will it to work.

She was good with cars, but not an expert; after checking under the hood once more and coming up empty-handed for the second time, she decided she was going to have to take a walk over to the nearest mechanic's for some help.

But first, she had to find Barry. God only knew what he had been up to since escaping from her custody.

She looked around again, wondering where he might have gone. _Boy, this place is run-down,_ she thought, noticing for the first time the splits in the pavement beneath her feet, the crooked, flickering light of the café sign which read _Café 5to2_, the spider-web cracks splayed out across the pane of the glass of one of the windows. _Ghost town much? _On the bright side, she thought to herself as she pushed through the door of the café with a loud creak, she could probably find some work while she was there. If there was one thing this town seemed to be in need of, it was a repairman – or, in this case, repairwoman.

The interior of the café was slightly warmer, but not much brighter, than the street outside. The fog, of course, remained outside the door, yet somehow the colors seemed muted here too, as though the life of the town itself was slowly draining away. She noticed she was the only customer in the room, and almost turned around and left before she realized she was not completely alone. There was a man behind the bar, polishing a glass and whistling a strange tune to himself, seemingly oblivious to her presence, though there was no way he could have not heard the little bell on the door chime as she walked in.

The bartender had a pale tan cowboy hat on over his long brown hair, a black vest with skulls and red roses embroidered across the chest and shoulders, and piercings in both ears. As she approached him, he looked up at the sound of her boots on the tile floor, and raised his eyebrows and the corners of his lips in what seemed to be pleasant surprise. "Hey, a customer, huh? Haven't had one o' those in years," he drawled good-naturedly, tipping his hat.

"Really? I couldn't tell." She cast a pointed glance around the empty café. "Sorry to disappoint you, uh, Scott," she said, glimpsing a name-tag pinned onto his vest, "but I'm not really here to buy. I'm looking for a friend of mine." She described Barry briefly, carefully skirting around the topic of his personality except to mention he was rather eccentric. "Sound familiar?"

"Nah, sorry, can't say I've seen him," said Scott as he put away the glass and reached for another. "But I'll keep an eye out. Sure you don't want anything? How about a map?"

She smiled as he handed her one from a stack sitting on the far end of the counter. "What, is it really that obvious? Or did someone write 'tourist' on my forehead when I wasn't looking?"

He chuckled. "Nah. Silent Hill's a small town. Everyone knows everyone, 'specially me. Besides, I can't remember the last time I saw a girl lookin' as lost as you do now."

She thanked him for the map, and dropped a handful of cenz into the tip jar on her way out. She unfolded the map and looked it over, not sure what exactly she was searching for. _Now,_ she said to herself,_ if I were Barry, where would I…_ Her eyes found a building marked _The Family Butcher_, and she nodded to herself. There was no guarantee, of course, but it was a good place to start, anyway. Pocketing the map, she turned and began jogging down Bachman Road towards the butcher's shop.

The solitary sound of her boots' muffled _thump-thump-thump_ against the fractured concrete of the sidewalk struck her as horridly lonely, and her footsteps began to quicken along with her pulse. It was true the weather was not exactly inviting in terms of casual strolls or outings, but surely someone else had to be out on the town besides herself. She nearly broke into a run before stopping herself, torn between the need to laugh at her own foolishness and the strong desire to break the silence and simply scream out Barry's name.

Just then –

She froze. She was not alone; she had heard something, she was sure of it. Ah – there it was again: a peculiar, semi-mechanical sound, like spare parts tossed together in a bag, being dragged along the ground. It lasted for a moment – draaaaag – and then a pause. Then – draaaaag.

Whoever it was certainly was taking their time. Either that, or perhaps they had a limp… "Hello?" She resisted the urge to speak in whispers, telling herself there was nothing to fear in breaking the silence, even as the hair on the back of her neck began to stand up. "Someone there?"

There was no answer, but the sound continued to draw closer. _Clank. Clank. Clankclankclank. Skreeeeek…_

Slowly, a shadow began to emerge from the dense gray of the fog. Only, it wasn't a body erect, as she had been expecting. It was something on the ground – was that a person, crawling up the street? "Hello? Hey, do you need…"

The word _help_ died on her lips as, taking a step forward, she brought the figure into full focus. _Person_ was not remotely the right word for the thing on the ground coming towards her, though it might once have been human. It still had the silhouette of one – but the flesh was gray and mottled like a corpse's, and the head was tilted at a brutal, impossible angle, suggesting a broken neck. It wasn't even entirely made of flesh – half of the distorted, faceless face was exposed rusty metallic sinews, like the inner muscle-like workings of automail before the outer casing is attached. The left arm was the same; she could actually see the gears turning and the synthetic ligaments straining as the creature pulled itself forward along the ground. Its legs, a mishmash of metal and raw skin, dragged uselessly behind it, a trail of shed pieces of rotted flesh and broken parts left in its wake.

_Clankclank. Crunch. Skreeek…_

She screamed, and its head twitched violently in her direction. It lurched forward with a sudden, terrible speed, slashing out with the claw-like fingers at the end of its automail arm, slicing through the bottom of Kate's jeans and just scratching the surface of her lower calf as she stumbled back away from it.

She did a quick about-face and fled, running blindly in the opposite direction, not caring where she went, as long as it was away, away, _away_. She heard the creature lurching after her, its fractured and disjointed parts rubbing together with horrible crunching and shrieking sounds as it gave chase.

It was surprisingly fast – but terror carried her faster. Although she soon left the creature far behind, she kept running, until she skidded to a stop at a building located at the end of the street. She barely glimpsed the name on the sign – _Al's Electronics_ – before throwing herself at the door, beyond caring whether or not the store was open. The door had been locked once, but the lock was broken, and she all but fell across the threshold in her desperation to get inside. She slammed the door shut behind her, and when it would not lock, she pulled out the chalk she always carried in her pocket and sketched a quick transmutation circle on the wood, quickly fusing the door with the wall using alchemy.

She backed away until she hit the sales counter, her hands clamped over her mouth to prevent herself from gasping noisily for air. Cautiously, she climbed over the counter and crouched down behind it, listening in the deafening silence for the tell-tale sound of clinking, dragging mechanical parts…

She waited for a full twenty minutes, each of which lasted an eternity, before slowly standing up again, having heard nothing at all besides her own racing heartbeat. She closed her eyes, and took one long, slow breath, then another. She counted to ten before opening her eyes, telling herself what she had seen had not been real. She was over-tired, she was disoriented and confused; her mind was playing tricks on her. Perhaps she was dreaming, or perhaps she had lost the ability to tell the difference between waking and not.

Part of her wanted to call out for someone, to ask if anyone was in – but it didn't take a genius to realize there was no one in the store with her. The lights were off, and the place was dead quiet; she was alone. Again.

She glimpsed something shiny on the counter out of the corner of her eye; turning to it, she realized it was a revolver. A revolver with bloodstains on it. There was blood on the counter as well.

She felt panic rising again like bile in her throat, and swallowed hard. _Do not scream. Do not lose it. Don't think about it. Just take it._ Clenching her jaw, she forced her arm to move, her hand to reach for the gun, to pick it up and wipe the blood – _still wet,_ she noticed, her stomach churning – off on her jeans. She checked the chamber: five out of six rounds were left. She clicked it shut again, checked the safety, and shoved the gun into her belt, wondering briefly where the missing bullet had gone.

Grateful she had ended up in an electronics store, she headed out from behind the counter and surveyed the merchandise. Her eyes landed upon a row of swivel-head clip-on flashlights hanging from a rack nearby, and she seized one, ripping it out of the packaging without a moment's hesitation. After a short search, she located batteries as well, and popped them in. Switching the flashlight on, she found a little comfort and confidence in the soft white light that streamed out from the bulb.

She shone the flashlight around, looking for anything else that might be useful. There were rows of radios on the far wall; hopeful that she could contact Central, she grabbed a small walkie-talkie type. After quickly removing it from the packaging and inserting the proper batteries, she switched it on – and groaned. No matter what channel she turned to, she seemed to get only silence or faint static.

Wait – was that…?

"Central Command, do you read me? Central, come in! Colonel Mustang, are you there?" she called frantically, but she got no response. The voices she was picking up did not seem to have heard her. She turned up the volume a bit, crossing her fingers for a familiar voice. She heard what sounded like a woman crying; an older male's voice was trying vainly to comfort her.

_"Shhh… dear, they'll find her, I'm sure of it,"_ the man was saying. His lack of conviction carried through clearly in his voice, even through the static. _"It's only been one night. I'm sure she's fine…"_

_"She's not at home, and she's not at Monica's," _the woman sobbed. _"They said she told them she was going straight home. Where could she have gone? What if…"_

_"Don't say it. Don't even think it. She's all right… Our daughter is all right. She has to be…"_

_"I told her not to walk around alone at night – I told her!"_

Something vaguely resembling a chime sounded off in the background; Kate heard the woman gasp.

_"Wait here,"_ said the man; a chair scraped against tile, then footsteps led to the creak of an opening door. Another pair followed quickly after; Kate guessed the woman had followed the man after all. _"Mustang, what are you— Oh, God. Laura – did you find her?"_

_"I'm sorry, Mr. Bailey…"_ said what sounded like Roy Mustang's voice – but it was different, somehow. Younger, perhaps.

_"No,"_ cried the woman in anguish._ "She's not – she can't be – please, God, no!"_

The woman's bawling faded away, along with the static and other noises, until Kate was left with nothing but dead air and a deep sense of dread.

Suddenly, far too close to the storefront for comfort, Kate heard an awful scraping sound, like that of a knife being sharpened. She almost called out to it, thinking perhaps it was Barry – but something (perhaps her survival instincts kicking in) told her no, she did not want to attract the attention of whatever was on the other side of the door. As silently as possible, she backed away, carefully avoiding the store's merchandise and the discarded wrappers she'd left on the floor as she made her way towards the back door. She crouched down against the wall, out of sight of anything that might be at either entrance, and waited for the noise to cease. She switched off her flashlight and radio.

The scraping seemed to draw closer for a moment, stopping just outside the door. Kate held her breath; gently, oh so gently, she pulled out her signature gloves bearing deconstruction transmutation circles, and tugged them on over her numb fingers. She waited, hands poised and ready for action should whatever it was decide to enter the shop.

But the critical moment never came – after a long pause, she heard the noise grow softer again as the source headed away again, continuing past the door and heading on down the road. Kate did not make a move until long after it had passed out of hearing distance.

Rising a little unsteadily, she flexed her hands. _The hell with this,_ she thought, pulling out the map again. _Screw the butcher shop. I'm going to the police station. Maybe they can tell me what the hell is going on here. Plus, I can check in and see if they've already arrested Barry for something._

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><p><strong>Chapter Guide<strong>

**_The bold italics indicate the line/section from the story that I am explaining. The non-italicized text is the explanation. Sorry for the crappy ffnet formatting._**

**_The title of this fic, _**"Here Comes a Candle," comes from a line from an old English rhyme called "Oranges and Lemons." It was also references in Silent Hill: Origins. That's all I shall explain for now... but I promise it will be more relevant later. You'll see. (Muahaha.)**  
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**_The title of this chapter_** comes from a line from the song "A Rain of Brass Petals" from the _Silent Hill 3_ soundtrack. The verse goes, _"A human caught/in monochrome dreams,/I scream to wake up/My voice drowns deep underground;/Only the dead can hear me,/see me…"_ It's also a fun bonus that the phrase reminds me of the first opening theme for season 1 of Black Butler: "Monochrome Kiss."

**_"I have never felt an emptiness of self like I did right then and I never will forget that feeling. It was like I crossed over into a realm I could never come back from." – David Gore_**

David Gore is a serial killer who preyed upon young, attractive women with his partner in crime, his cousin Fred Waterfield. They are both currently incarcerated in Florida.

**_Have I caught my __heav'nly jewel,/__Teaching sleep most fair to be?/Now will I teach her that she,/When she wakes, is too, too cruel._**

The first of the infamous Silent Hill memos makes an appearance in Kate's car. (And by first I mean first in this story; this was never a memo in the actual games.) This is the first stanza of Philip Sidney's sonnet "Song 2" from _Astrophil and Stella_. That it's on a parking ticket is a nod to one of the memos from _SH: Origins_. I wonder how the memos come to exist; do they just appear out of nowhere, or does crazy ol' Dahlia Gillespie run around leaving notes for people to find at random?

**_She saw now that it was a miracle she hadn't hit the fire hydrant sitting mere inches away from the hood; clearly, she hadn't parked here in a calm state of mind. She figured she must have swerved to avoid hitting something, perhaps a child chasing after a ball or a stray dog…_**

The original _SH_ game (and _SH: Shattered Memories_) begins when Harry Mason wakes up in his car, having crashed it just after entering Silent Hill, and realizes his daughter Cheryl is missing. A lot of the games have openings like this, and at least one involves the protagonist swerving to avoid hitting a mysterious figure (dun dun dun), which leads of course to the car crash. Also, the dog is probably gonna be the only reference to Groaners, Worm Heads, Double Heads, Sniffer Dogs, or Ferals that you get in this story, because I simply do not _do_ skinned pets. It's a personal choice.

**_Little shards of memory came back to her, bit by bit…_**

Ahaha. "Shards of memory" = _Shattered Memories_, geddit?

**_Boy, this place is run-down, she thought, noticing for the first time the splits in the pavement beneath her feet, the crooked, flickering light of the café sign which read Café 5to2…_**

Café 5to2 is one of the first locations Harry visits in the first game. As for the splits, flickers and cracks… well, Fog World has always been rather dilapidated anyway, but in this story there is an emphasis on it for two reasons: one, it represents the state of Barry's mental health, and two, it's the town's way of screwing with Kate and her obsession with fixing broken things.

**_"Sorry to disappoint you, uh, Scott," she said, glimpsing a name-tag pinned onto his vest…_**

Note the cowboy hat and duds. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Scott McNeil, English dub voice actor for Hohenheim of Light in the first _Fullmetal Alchemist_ anime, making a cameo as a bartender with a southern accent. I want his hat.

**_Her eyes lighted upon a building marked The Family Butcher, and she nodded to herself. There was no guarantee, of course, but it was a good place to start, anyway. Pocketing the map, she turned and began jogging down Bachman Road towards the butcher's shop._**

The Family Butcher is a location straight from _SH: Origins_, and Bachman Road (named after Stephen King's pseudonym, Richard Bachman) appears in several of the games.

**_…the flesh was gray and mottled like a corpse's, and the head was tilted at a brutal, impossible angle, suggesting a broken neck. It wasn't even entirely made of flesh – half of the distorted, faceless face was exposed rusty metallic sinews, like the inner muscle-like workings of automail…_**

Say hello to the monsters I hereby dub Gearheads. They vaguely resemble the Lurkers from _SH: Homecoming_, but with automail modifications… sorta like the Terminator. Again, the theme of being broken; the automail parts and their state of disrepair are an extension of this. The split between flesh and metal is also meant to suggest duality; two very different elements forcibly meshed in one body.

**_She barely glimpsed the name on the sign – Al's Electronics – before throwing herself at the door…_**

A nod to Alphonse Elric; the fact that Kate gets the radio here is an oblique reference to how Al's first display of alchemy occurs when he fixes a broken radio in Liore.

**_"She's not at home, and she's not at Monica's," the woman sobbed._**

Named after Monica Rial, English dub voice actress for May Chang in _FMA: Brotherhood._

**_"Mustang, what are you— Oh, God. Laura – did you find her?" "I'm sorry, Mr. Bailey…"_**

If know your VA's and didn't get this one, you should be skewered by the Ultimate Spear. This is of course a reference to Laura Bailey, English VA for Lust in pretty much every dubbed _FMA_ production ever. Laura is also the name of a uber-annoying girl-child in _SH2_; although I wouldn't mind throwing her to the wolves, this isn't literally meant to be her.

**_Suddenly, far too close to the storefront for comfort, Kate heard an awful scraping sound, like that of a knife being sharpened._**

Similar to, but not exactly the same as, an enormous blade being dragged along the ground, possibly by an extremely tall, humanoid figure sporting a pyramid-shaped helmet of sorts. Ah, but careful – don't jump to any conclusions just yet…


	2. A Demon in My View

Since I'm off on holiday this weekend (a holiday of HORROR AND MAYHEM, naturally) and will have much schoolwork to do when I return, I decided to go ahead and post Chapter 2 for y'alls satisfaction before I left, as I might not get to post again for a bit. (I do swear on Barry's life I shall have this finished by Halloween, however, so don't worry about that.) I apologize for the lack of Barry in the first chapter... hopefully this will somewhat make amends for that. Also... more fun with serial killer quotes! Whee! XP

Oh, and before I forget, I'd like to thank a recent reviewer, **undeadpufferfish**, for his encouraging reviews of _Sixty-Six_ and _Feelings_, which gave me the push I needed to start this one. (Hopefully that's a good thing, lol.) If you haven't already, you should totally go check out his Fiona/Rumpelstiltskin fics, they're fantastic!

And finally, **a note concerning something to do with _Silent Hill_**, in case I do get any readers reading this that aren't much into the series... I mention this in the chapter commentary, but just for conveniences' sake: one of the odd elements of pretty much any _SH_ game are these **memos you find randomly scattered about the town**: notes that may or may not be clues to riddles, or sometimes they're warnings of a sort, but in any care are always tres interesante to read (at least IMO). Generally the source of the notes is unclear... Anyway, I'm just mentioning this for anyone who might not get what's up with the notes in the story (yes, there will be more), but doesn't want to read the chapter commentaries. So yeah. There you go.

**Also for the non-_SH_ fans**... one more thing you should know is that there are something like 3... I don't know, **alternate dimensions**, I guess? Not sure what to call them... anyway, the town randomly shifts between them at will. I don't really know if there's supposed to be some sort of trigger (although in one of the games the protagonist could force this transition himself); in this story, it's pretty much random. The three dimensions are: the "**real world**" (this is where you'll find Scott and other human residents; it's generally foggy here, but there are no monsters), the **Fog World** (which always has fog, and monsters, and is often difficult to discern from the "real world" as on the surface it appears almost identical), and finally, the **Otherworld**, which basically turns the town into Hell itself, and I suppose the monsters are dangerous/more plentiful here. Otherworlds differ from game to game... for the purposes of this story, I have made up my own version, vaguely similar to the one from _Silent Hill 3_.

Okay, I think that's it for now. Read on! And please review!

**Disclaimer**: As always, nothing belongs to me. How depressing. /emo

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><p><strong>Chapter 2: A Demon in My View<strong>

_"You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God." – Ted Bundy_

_Of course_. Kate stood with folded arms and a scowl on her face, staring at the Silent Hill Police Station in an apparent effort to instigate a spontaneous combustion. Fear had taken a backseat to indignant frustration when she'd managed to arrive safely at the station (having taken great pains to avoid a second encounter with the humanoid creature from earlier) only to find the place wrecked and abandoned. The double doors hung off their hinges, leaning into each other at odd angles, and what little she could see of the interior was dark and uninviting. Much like the rest of the town.

The obvious next step was to keep moving, but Kate hesitated, considering whether or not she should try to enter and obtain more ammo for her revolver. Stepping up to the ruined door, she nudged it hard, attempting to move it – and slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a shriek when something small, quick and hairless scurried out and over her feet. No – not hairless, she realized, feeling nauseous… skinless. And oozing something that smelled positively vile.

It was vicious, too; rather than turn tail and run like most rats, it turned on her and launched itself at her boot in an attempt to gnaw through it. Disgusted, she kicked it away with considerable force; it landed in some brush a few yards away, and either took the opportunity to run after all, or did not get up at all.

_Screw this,_ she thought, deciding that she had enough ammo after all – not to mention, her alchemy. There was no point in risking her life just to hopefully obtain a few extra bullets. If things went her way (not that they had been so far), she wouldn't even need the ones she already had.

Kate turned away from the police station, and after a glance at her map, started heading back to Café 5to2. She figured she might have a potential ally there, at least – provided Scott the bartender was still alive. But when she went inside, the space behind the bar was empty.

_No. No way._ "Scott? Scott, are you here?" she shouted, rushing over to the bar to see if perhaps he was crouched behind it, but he was not there. She tried the back room next, but the door was locked and the light on the other side appeared to be off, and no answer came to her frantic banging on the hard wood. Remembering her radio, she switched it on, and tried again to reach Central, or even any police officers that might be left in the town, but her efforts proved to be a waste of time.

"Shit!"

She went back to the bar, and spotted a note lying on the counter. _Was that there before?_ she wondered, picking it up. It was a receipt, and the spidery handwriting on the back read:

_CAN YOU HIDE WHO YOU ARE? TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF. CAN YOU STOP WHAT WILL BE?_

She shook her head, trying to ignore the chill that crept down her spine, and left the note on the counter. Though it didn't make any sense, she felt as though it was meant for her – but even if it was, she didn't want it. And if it turned out to be Barry's doing, she was firmly resolved to kill him, slowly and painfully.

She surveyed the vacant café with a growing sense of despair, feeling utterly and terrifyingly alone. The bartender had been the only truly human presence she'd encountered since waking; without him, she had nothing. _I need to find Barry,_ she thought, clenching her fists and fighting a rising sense of panic. _Where the hell is he?_

Her eyes wandered towards one of the windows; suddenly, she jumped, having glimpsed something move past the window of the shop across the street. Hastening back outside, she looked up and read the name of the shop, painted in red letters on a faded white sign: _Rökbel Automail Parts_. She hesitated, wondering whether to try shouting, or to go inside and see whatever it was for herself (and risk finding another one of those… _monsters_), or to wait outside to see if anything came out to meet her.

She heard, or thought she heard, a familiar, maniacal laugh, possibly coming from the direction of the shop, and her boots were pounding against asphalt before her brain had fully processed the decision to move. "Barry? BARRY! Are you in there?"

Assuming the shop was closed, she kicked hard at the door, only to find it had been unlocked the whole time – or, more likely, that the lock was broken. Hands ready to clap together and initiate an alchemic reaction at the first sign of trouble, she stepped across the threshold, and switched on the flashlight clipped to her belt.

It occurred to her that her radio was emitting static now; she could have sworn it had been on a silent channel before. Just as she was reaching down to change channels, however, she was hit suddenly with a wave of intense and unexpected agony; crying out in pain, she clutched her head, her knees buckling beneath her as the world around her went black. Distantly, she thought she heard something like a siren sounding off somewhere in the town. Mercifully, the experience only lasted a moment or so; soon, the blackness faded away again, and the siren and the pain along with it. But when her sight returned, Kate instantly regretted it.

The shop had changed. The familiar sight of scattered automail parts and mechanic's tools had been a creepy sight to begin with, when viewed in an unfamiliar darkness, but now… there was blood everywhere. Dried, caked blood in the crevices of the automail; warm, crimson drops dripping from a ceiling too dark to see; sticky, congealed pools of it lurking under worktables and seeping into the soles of her boots. The various mechanical limbs weren't just spare parts anymore: they looked somehow alive, and Kate could have sworn they weren't simply stained with blood, but actually _bleeding_. And then she heard it:

_Clinkclink skreek. Draaaag…_

Something sharp and painfully serrated tore through denim and flesh just inches above her vital Achilles tendon, and she cursed aloud. Turning around, she leapt back, and found she had been backed into a corner by another one of the crawling creatures – not the same one, but similar to the one from earlier. Instead of a clawed hand, however, this one was sporting an arm that ended in something resembling a hacksaw. Its head was lolling back so far that if it had eyes, they would have been staring out behind it, rather than ahead.

There was no room for alchemy, and no time to think. She hesitated for the space of a heartbeat – then the thing lurched forward, aiming for her knees, and she drew her gun, acting on instinct. It was a curiously simple thing; just a twitch of a muscle in her right forefinger, a slight pull on a trigger no wider than a handful of millimeters, and…

_BANG!_

She had been aiming for the shoulder, but her inexperience with a gun caused the bullet to miss its mark, piercing the thing's neck and head instead. It shrieked and writhed, its attack swinging wide and missing her completely, and Kate shot again, and again, piercing the jaw and the upper chest.

It uttered a long, tormented groan, and collapsed with a clang onto the floor. It twitched violently for a few seconds, then fell still with a single, soft, unbearably _human_ sigh.

Kate stood frozen over the dead thing's body, her breath trapped by the lump in her throat. She tried to swallow, but couldn't; she tried to look away, but her eyes seemed glued to the corpse. All her time with Barry, all her military training, and all of the horror stories of the massacre in Ishval could never have prepared her for this moment. She couldn't think, and didn't know how to feel. She just stood there, white as a ghost and twice as spooked.

Her insides felt empty, like they had all fallen out the moment she pulled the trigger. She was lightheaded but not dizzy; slowly, she managed to lower the gun, wondering whose hands were those, that were gripping the revolver so tightly their knuckles had turned white. She forced breath back into her lungs, but no matter how deeply she inhaled, it never seemed enough; the air passed right through her, as though she no longer existed.

And somewhere, deep down in the darkest recesses of her mind, a small voice was saying: _Well, now. That was easy enough, wasn't it?_

Then, out of nowhere, the phone rang. For the space of a full minute, Kate simply gazed at the plastic receiver hanging on the wall, unable to recall what it was for or why it was making such an awful racket. When the noise refused to stop, she reached out and picked it up, muscle memory kicking in well enough to tell her to place the receiver next to her ear.

"For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellooooow," sang a voice at the other end of the line. It sounded like a man's voice, but it was high-pitched and a bit manic, like someone in the midst of a nervous breakdown. "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU— Oh. Oh MY. It seems I've forgotten your name." He giggled.

The hand that held the phone to Kate's ear was trembling. "Barry?"

"Barry? What kind of name is that? Oh well. Congratulations, Barry!"

"W-What? What are you…"

"Oh, come now, don't be so modest! You know what! I'm so proud of you," he said with a feigned sniffle. Horrified, Kate glanced down again at the creature she had shot. Killed.

"Scott?" she tried, not knowing who else to name.

"Who? No – no, my name isn't _Scott_. He's gone now, and so is little Laura – chop chop chop, the last man's dead! – just like the other three and twenty dead birds."

"Laura…? What the – who is this? How did you know about that?" Had this guy been stalking her and overheard the conversation on the radio?

The voice paused. "I'm not going to tell you!" he finally said, in a taunting, sing-song tone of voice. "Who I am doesn't matter. But _who_ are _you_?"

"I'm… Kate…"

"Really? You don't sound too sure. I thought you said your name was Barry? Or is it… number twenty-four?" He cackled.

"Listen…"

"No, YOU listen!" he snapped, then suddenly laughed again. "It's time to celebrate, and I have a present for you. Do you prefer to give pain… or to receive it?" Pause. "You can have the one… you HATE the most!"

Kate shook her head violently. "No… I don't want…"

"Oh dear. You don't want my present? Too bad. You really are a jolly good fellow, aren't you? For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow…" The song was ended abruptly with a decisive _click_, followed by silence.

She let the phone fall, jerking a little in surprise when it hit the floor. Belatedly, she realized the cord had been cut: the phone had been disconnected the entire time.

She heard a noise like a footstep behind her, and spun around with her gun raised, nearly pulling the trigger before recognizing the face staring back at her, wide-eyed.

"Hey now, that's a bit hostile, don't you think?"

She felt like crying and laughing and screaming all at once. "Barry… thank God. Finally." She put the gun away, and frowned. "Where the HELL have you been, you bastard?" She slapped him. Hard.

"Now THAT was uncalled for!" Barry pouted, rubbing his reddened cheek. "What did _I _ever do to _you_?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say, "Are you serious?" Out loud, she said, "What the hell is wrong with you? I've been looking for you since I woke up. Where did you go? And why the hell did you just leave me sitting unconscious in the car? Why didn't you wake me up?" She grimaced, noticing for the first time the blood spattered on his shirt and pants, and even a little on his face. The cleaver in his hand was _dripping_ with it.

"You wouldn't wake up," he answered simply.

But she no longer cared about not being left in the car. "Barry… what have you done? Whose blood is that?"

"Not mine," he said with a toothy grin. Seeing the fear in her eyes, his smile widened. "Oooh, you're wondering what sort of awful, violent crimes I've been committing while you were asleep, aren't you? Tell me, what do you _think_ I've done?"

"If you killed Scott— or anyone else, for that matter—"

"Who? No, they didn't have names – at least, I don't _think_ so… Look, it's not like they're human – you never _said_ I couldn't kill things that weren't human! What, is that a new rule or something?"

"You're not supposed to kill _anything_," Kate groaned. But she couldn't help feeling the tiniest little bit… relieved. "Tell me the only things you've killed have been the monsters…"

"Oh? They look like monsters to you?" Barry mused; when the color drained from her cheeks, he blinked. "Huh? What's _your_ problem?" She couldn't help glancing towards the carcass; following her gaze, he saw the dead thing on the floor and beamed. "Ohoho, what is THIS? Was that gunshot I heard earlier your doing, then?"

"I… Yes." She stood ramrod straight, her chin up, trying hard to keep the corpse out of her line of sight. But watching Barry's expression turn from surprise to triumphant glee was almost just as sickening.

"Oooh, how utterly, terribly WONDERFUL!" he crowed. "Oh, congratulations, my dear. I knew you had it in you! Didn't I tell you? Everyone has a killer inside them just _waiting_ to come out to play… EVERYONE!" He paused. "Although… personally, I find guns a bit dull. It's all over _far_ too quickly. You should find yourself a good cleaver."

"I'm not a killer."

"Oh, yes, I can _see_ that…"

"I'M NOT A KILLER!" she screamed, and Barry stopped and stared, clearly taken aback.

"Well, now. What's got you so wound up and shrieky? It's not as if it was _really_ alive to begin with. It probably _deserved_ to die. And even if you didn't kill it, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the type to return the favor. You're either the butcher or the butchered, remember?"

He was right about that, at least. If she had not pulled the trigger, there was no doubt in her mind she would have ended up bleeding to death on the floor. And God only knew what that thing would have done with her once it had her on its level. Even if it had been human once, it certainly wasn't anymore; if it came down to her life or its, it was only natural that she pick her own. She had no intention of dying any time soon. And if she wanted to stay alive, she was going to have to accept that she had taken a life, and move on.

And if she had to pull the trigger again… so be it.

At least it wasn't human. Right?

She took a deep breath, feeling almost steady for the first time since waking up alone on the side of the road. Somehow, being around Barry again seemed to be clearing a little of the fog from her mind. "Right. Well. What's done is done. Don't make a big deal out of it, or I swear to God I will shoot you in your cleaver hand." Barry frowned, drawing back from her a little. She continued, "Besides, it wasn't murder in cold blood. It was self-defense. I had no choice."

"Oh, of course. Of COURSE." Barry nodded, feigning an air of understanding. "You keep telling yourself that. But you and I both know, deep down… some part of you enjoyed it!"

She shook her head. "No. You're the one with the fetish for murder and death. That's not me."

"Hey – every man to his own tastes," replied Barry with a shrug. "Mine is for corpses. And I'm not the only one."

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2 Commentary<strong>

The title of this chapter comes from the last line of the Edgar Allan Poe poem, "Alone."

**_"You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God." – Ted Bundy_**

Ted Bundy was a famous American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women during the 1970's; he was executed in Florida in 1989.

**_…something small, quick and hairless scurried out and over her feet. No – not hairless, she realized, feeling nauseous… skinless. And oozing something that smelled positively vile._**

These adorable critters are what I like to call Lab Rats. You can guess whose grimy past inspired these little guys (I'll give you a hint: it's not Kate). Not to mention the whole skinned thing is an allusion to the way butchers skin animals. (I said I don't do skinned _pets_ – but I've never had a rat as a pet, so for me they don't count. Also, if it counts for anything, I really, _really_ didn't want to include them… but my muse insisted.)

**_CAN YOU HIDE WHO YOU ARE? TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF. CAN YOU STOP WHAT WILL BE?_**

Ah, another glorious Silent Hill memo. Proof that caps lock is _much_ more terrifying than regular old text. The message itself is taken from the lyrics to "Shot Down in Flames" from the _SH: Origins_ soundtrack. Is this memo really for Kate? What _does_ it mean, anyway? These are questions which, while they have answers… I'll leave up to you to figure out for yourselves. Muahahaha.

**_Heading back outside, she looked up and read the name of the shop, painted in red letters on a faded white sign: Rökbel Automail Parts._**

Luckily, Winry doesn't actually work here. Although I bet she could take down quite a few monsters with that wrench of hers.

**_The shop had changed. The familiar sight of scattered automail parts and mechanic's tools had been a creepy sight to begin with, when viewed in an unfamiliar darkness, but now… there was blood everywhere._**

Some Otherworlds are filled with fire; others, with ice. Barry's and Kate's… is filled with blood. And guts. And veins and sinews and muscles and severed limbs… Yeah, you get the picture. I blame Barry for most of it.

**_Then, out of nowhere, the phone rang._**

One of my favorite moments from _Silent Hill 3_ is the random as hell, mad as a hatter Happy Birthday Caller. No one knows exactly who it is; there are theories that it's Leonard Wolf, that it's Vincent, that it's Stanley Coleman, or even that it's Silent Hill itself, just trying to mess with Heather's head (more). In this case… well, I'll leave it up to you. Personally, I favor the Vincent theory, but the "it's just one of those SH things" idea (kind of like the memos) also sounds pretty plausible to me.

**_"…He's gone now, and so is little Laura – chop chop chop, the last man's dead! – just like the other three and twenty dead birds."_**

Yes, he is talking about the same Laura from the radio conversation in chapter one. Yes, he DID just say "chop, chop, chop" – but again, don't jump to conclusions. That part is actually a line from the old English folk song/children's game, "Oranges and Lemons." (This will be more relevant later, I promise.) And yes, the "three and twenty dead birds" line is a play on the "four and twenty blackbirds" line from ye olde "Sing a Song of Sixpence." There were also a lot of bird references in some of the poem-puzzles of _SH3_. Oh, and by the way, a little bit of Barry the Chopper trivia: according to his back-story in the _FMA_ manga (possibly the anime too; I'm not sure), he murdered _twenty-three_ people before being caught by the military.

**_"Who I am doesn't matter. But who are you?"_**

Why, hello Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Dodgson, aka light of my life. Yes, you should imagine the creepy caller using the same inflection for that "who are you" line as the caterpillar did in the Disney version of _Alice in Wonderland_. The caterpillar was also referenced in _SH: Origins_.

**_"…I thought you said your name was Barry? Or is it… number twenty-four?"_**

Yep. He can count. Also, in the original phone conversation from _SH3_, Heather asks if the caller is Leonard, and he replies in the negative, adding, "I'm not your beloved Stanley either. His new name is… number seven!" Later on in the game, you find numbered gurneys in the morgue of the hospital, and when you stand near the one marked with a 7, you can hear someone (presumably Stanley) choking to death, or sighing Heather's name.

**_"…I have a present for you. Do you prefer to give pain… or to receive it?" Pause. "You can have the one… you HATE the most!"_**

This is taken almost verbatim from the original conversation in the game. I love it so, and it fit too well NOT to use it. Although it looks like Kate's already received her present…

**_"Oh? They look like monsters to you?"_**

Barry totally lifted that line from Vincent in _SH3_. I absolutely _adore_ that line (and Vincent). But I'm not sure Barry uses it with the same intent that Vincent did. He's just got a really screwy sense of aesthetics, is all.

**_"…It's not as if it was really alive to begin with. It probably deserved to die. And even if you didn't kill it, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the type to return the favor. You're either the butcher or the butchered, remember?"_**

Dude. Is Barry actually attempting to sort of… comfort her? He really needs to work on his people skills.

**_"You're the one with the fetish for murder and death."_**

Almost a direct quote from one David Berkowitz… who, if you know anything about anything about serial killers, you will know was also known as the Son of Sam. The original quote was, "I always had a fetish for murder and death." I bet he and Barry would have gotten on quite nicely. Except for the whole "the devil made me do it" thing; Barry prefers to take all the credit for his own insanity, thanks very much.

**_"Hey – every man to his own tastes," replied Barry with a shrug. "Mine is for corpses."_**

Barry seems to be into quotes this chapter. This one is courtesy of Henri Blot. Umm. He was a necrophile in the 1800's. Er – that's all I want to say about him. The original quote was exactly the same, sans the "hey" part. (Yeah… Barry DEFINITELY means this differently than Blot did. At least I sure as hell _hope_ so.)


	3. Murderous, Bloody, Full of Blame

A hearty welcome back to you, my loves. I apologize for the delay in posting this... I was right when I said I'd be busy. Goodness knows October is always crazy for me. (My own damn fault, of course, but still!) I blame the Psych online Hashtag Killer mystery game for my distraction. That and my preoccupation with crafting the perfect fake rusty metal pipe for my Halloween costume (because no Heather Mason is complete without one!). Anyway, here's the new chapter, commentary included of course. Enjoy!

Also, quick side note: thank you once again to all my reviewers so far... you guys really succeeded in guilting me into finishing this chapter sooner rather than later, with all your lovely words of encouragement. Hope you enjoy this next bit as well!

**Disclaimer:** Yeah, yeah. In the world of copyright and intellectual property, I am destitute here. Only Kate belong to me, and the monsters... (And at least in terms of the latter part: DO NOT WANT! D: )

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3: Murderous, Bloody, Full of Blame<strong>

_"From childhood's hour I have not been / As others were; I have not seen / As others saw; I could not bring / My passions from a common spring." – Edgar Allan Poe_

_"Oh, I'm not myself / My God, what have you done? / Oh, the memories of them keep coming home…" – Akira Yamaoka & Mary Elizabeth McGlynn_

"Remind me _why_ we want to leave again?"

Kate gestured with a wide wave to indicate the entire street as she led the way back to the car. "Isn't it obvious?"

The odd transformation that had occurred inside the automail shop appeared to have affected the rest of the town as well, and the change had decidedly been for the worse. The fog seemed to have lifted, but somehow without it the night seemed blacker than ever; there were dark stains on the sidewalk and the walls of the buildings, and metallic objects like lampposts and doorknobs were rough and rusted now, some of them having crumbled completely. The only light aside from Kate's flashlight was a faint, reddish-orangish glow, like the light of a fire, yet it was impossible to tell what or where the source was; there was no moon- or starlight. Most strange of all, Kate's sight even seemed to have been affected: out of the corners of her eyes, the town looked almost as though it was… _pulsing_. But that couldn't have been right, she knew, and whenever she turned her head for a direct look, the effect shifted to the edges of her vision again. It was a trick of the mind, she decided, and nothing more; she did her best to ignore it.

"What? What's not to like? It's nice and dark, perfect for lurking about in alleyways – if you're into that sort of thing – and all the people are either dead or gone. It's just those creatures, lots and lots of victims just BEGGING to be chopped to bits…"

"No way. We are _not_ staying here just so you can run around butchering things left and right. They might not be exactly friendly, but they're still living creatures… at least, I think they are," Kate added uncertainly.

"Who cares? They're not people. No one's going to arrest me for killing them. So what's the problem?" When she didn't respond immediately, he added slyly, "Speaking of the people… don't you want to know what happened to them?"

Kate's steps faltered for an instant. "I… I don't care."

"Oh REALLY? Some humanitarian you are. A whole town's worth of people goes missing, but you'll just be on your merry way, thanks very much. This is a whole new side of you… I think I like it!" he taunted.

"Shut it! It's not my responsibility… whatever happened in this town has nothing to do with us. I'll radio Central as soon as we get out of here and get Roy to send some men in…" Her steps slowed as her voice began to lose its conviction.

"Oh, yeah? What if it's too late? What if there IS someone still alive here, and they die because the military got here too late? This place probably isn't their highest priority, you know," Barry said offhandedly.

Kate clenched her fists, trying to fight against what she knew would be a foolish decision. Foolish, but most likely inevitable. "What could I possibly do here?" she asked softly. In the back of her mind, Scott the bartender's face floated into view; she wondered what had happened to him, if he might be in trouble, if she might be able to help him…

Barry shrugged. "Well, you've got your fancy-schmancy alchemy, don't'cha? That's gotta be worth SOMETHING."

"Yeah… but…" Throwing in the towel, she muttered a low oath, and turned on him. "Fine. Just – fine." She sighed. "So, where should we start looking? Any ideas?" She pulled out her map, shoving it in his face irritably.

"No need to be pushy about it. Hey – how about there?" He pointed a finger at a building marked three streets over from the one they were on; turning the map so she could read it, she saw he had pointed out the town church.

"Actually… not bad," she admitted. In a time of crisis, assuming the people weren't all dead or evacuated, survivors would allocate somewhere they felt safe, somewhere large – a church was one possible shelter. Another option that caught her eye was Alchemilla Hospital, but after a moment's space of imagining what a ghost town hospital might be like (creepy environmental transformations notwithstanding), she quickly resolved to try the church first. She wasn't much of a religious person, but she couldn't help vaguely hoping that the whole "this is holy ground" rule of horror stories would apply in Silent Hill.

They did not bother to attempt stealth, nor did they opt for speed instead. Kate had realized by now that neither would do them any good in the end; quiet or not, the monsters would come again sooner or later, and there was no sense in wasting energy running when there was no immediate need. (As for Barry, whose natural bloodlust seemed to be sated for the time being, he was too at ease for either option to even occur to him in the first place.)

Keeping an ear out for unwelcome sounds (especially that of mechanical parts scraping along the ground), Kate asked one of the questions that had been bothering her since regaining her consciousness in the car. "Hey – I was wondering, what's with all the notes?"

"Huh?"

"You know, the notes." She pulled from her pocket the first memo she'd found on the back of the parking ticket and held it up to show him. "What's with that? Trying to freak me out even _more_?"

He skimmed it, then sent her a look of pure disdain. "Do I _look_ like a poet to you? That's not even my handwriting."

It occurred to her that she had never seen his handwriting. She looked at the note again, considering his remark. It was true; he didn't exactly seem the type to write elaborate verses, however creepy, in his free time. He was more of a man of action, rather than words (even if he did talk a lot sometimes).

"But then… who…" Fear, like a single drop of sweat, slid ice-cold down the back of her spine. If Barry hadn't left those notes, that meant that someone – or some_thing_ – else had written them. And whatever it was had managed to leave one in the car for her while she was still sitting in it, unconscious and oblivious to the world around her.

She fell silent for a time; she knew better than to bother asking if he had received any notes. Even if one had been left for him, it was not likely he would have seen it, busy as he probably had been chopping up victims. There was, of course, another question she might have asked, something which had been eating at her ever since the episode with the radio in the electronics store. But she wasn't sure yet how to frame it, or if she wanted to at all. She got the feeling that ignorance would be bliss.

In a town where shadows looked like blood and the dead were neither silent nor still, the (relative) peace of their journey could not last for long; at length, they heard a new sound that was neither footsteps nor the strangely heavy silence of the town that sounded, somehow, like _more_ than silence. Kate seized Barry's arm, bringing them both to a standstill, and listened hard.

It was not mechanical, to her relief. Nor was it the eerie scraping sound she had heard but failed to identify back in Al's Electronics. It sounded like… like…

"Is that a cat?" Barry queried, all curiosity without a trace of fear or concern.

He _was_ right, though; it did sound quite like the mewling of a young cat or kitten. Her grip on his sleeve tightened, not out of fear for herself anymore but fear for the small animal she imagined was in danger or pain (or both). "Here, kitty, kitty?" she murmured tentatively. She did not reach for her gun, but neither did she remove her gloves with the deconstruction transmutation circles sewn into the palms; something just didn't feel right to her.

Just then, her radio began emitting static.

The mewling (and the static) grew louder, and closer, and after a moment it became clear that Kate's instincts had been right. There was a shadow down the alleyway to their left that was approaching them with an odd, uneven sort of loping gait; it was much too tall and upright to be any sort of cat. It stopped when it got to the edge of the building, as if afraid of coming out into the open. It looked, vaguely, like a woman.

Hidden in the shadows of the alley, her form was difficult to make out; from her general shape Kate could see that she stood hunched over, with her arms hanging loose at her sides and her head hanging low, with long locks of tangled brownish hair hanging down to her waist. It was hard to tell, but she did not seem to be clothed, and she seemed to tremble slightly.

Barry started to raise his cleaver, clearly intrigued in the new potential victim, but Kate stayed him with a hand on his wrist, hoping against her better judgment that this "woman" was just that, and nothing more. But as soon as Kate trained the full force of her flashlight on the figure, it shrieked with a piercing cry, like that of a bird of prey, and, crouching low on the ground to avoid the light, it sprang forward in an attempt to pounce on her.

Kate jerked back, raising both arms just in time to protect herself from the slash of the sharp claws which protruded from the monster's bluish, bloodless hands. Briefly, she glimpsed the lower half of the creature's face: a slack, possibly broken jaw, out of which dangled a long, forked tongue. With a disgusted grunt, she shoved back at the thing, aiming a powerful kick at its stomach which caused it to utter a low growl as it stumbled backwards.

Before Kate could so much as clap her hands together, the wide blade of Barry's butcher knife flashed in the beam of the flashlight, and suddenly the creature was screaming in agony, bleeding profusely from a deep wound to the shoulder, through which a pale crescent of bone was now visible. "Oh, yes, these are my absolute FAVORITES!" Barry cackled, hacking at it again with a terrible fervor, this time nearly slicing off a hand as it reached out to claw at him.

Kate grimaced, and she turned away as Barry went to work on the creature; she tried hard to ignore the sounds of the slaughter taking place behind her. Even when she covered her ears with her hands, she could not block out the sounds of the creature whimpering like a dog as it collapsed to the ground, nor the squelching, thudding noise of the knife as it cleaved through flesh and bone.

Vaguely, she realized the radio had fallen silent again.

"What are you doing? You're missing the best part!" she heard him exclaim.

Instead of dignifying the question with a direct answer, she said instead, "If it's dead, that's enough. We have to keep moving before we attract more of them." Removing her gloves momentarily, she clapped the reconstruction transmutation circles on her palms together and proceeded to heal the wounds on her forearms, wincing as the skin closed up again over the gashes.

"But I'm not done…" Barry whined.

"I don't care," she said flatly, pulling her gloves back on. "You had more than enough time for that earlier. Playtime is over. Come on."

She took a few cautious steps to the right before turning back around, taking great pains to keep both her gaze and the beam of the flashlight straight ahead as she passed by the dead thing's remains. With one last chop for good measure, Barry grudgingly followed.

"You're a real killjoy, you know that?"

Part of her felt she should thank him for saving her – again – but the rest of her was still too shaken to let the words pass her lips. This was the first time she had actually seen him kill – his self-mutilation of his first body didn't count, since it had already been dead and rotting to begin with. It had died a relatively quick death after Riza had shot it, and it had not felt the butchery that Barry had inflicted upon it post-mortem. It was something else entirely to listen to a living creature being mercilessly carved to shreds as it struggled, helpless, unable to fight back.

Kate was not sure what disturbed her most – the act itself, his obvious enjoyment of it, or the fact that she had not bothered to stop him, and was now walking side-by-side with him almost as though nothing had happened.

She reminded herself firmly of her resolution to do whatever it took to survive and escape Silent Hill. _When you're going through hell, keep going, right?_ she thought as they walked on.

"In the future, you're going to have to calm down. If we get mobbed by a bunch of these things because you can't keep your mouth shut, I will offer you up to them as a sacrificial diversion."

"You mean you'll offer _them_ up to _me_ as a sacrifice," Barry smirked, wiping the blood on his cleaver off on his shirt. "Ahhh. Just like helpless little lambs to the slaughter."

"Like _lambs_? Like horribly mutated demon-lambs from a torture dimension, maybe," said Kate dryly. "I still can't figure where they come from. Failed alchemy experiments?" She grimaced at the thought. It was unfortunately pretty plausible, now that she knew what the Amestrisian government was capable of, but somehow it didn't seem to fit. The idea that they were some sort of demons from hell seemed to hit closer to the mark.

She and Barry barely walked a block and a half down the road before the radio began producing white noise again. This was soon followed by a low growl, and another one of the woman-like beings emerged from the darkness, wandering straight into the beam of the flashlight. This time, Kate was ready for it – she was already clapping her hands together as it flung itself towards her.

She seized its wrists, bringing the claws up short just inches in front of her face, and the creature screeched as hand-shaped layers of skin were dissolved from its arms. While it was distracted, she kicked hard at one of its thin, misshapen knees – with a sickening crack of bones and a howl, it fell, writhing in agony.

She hesitated, and in that moment, she saw Barry's knife slice through the air, whistling past her ear in what she mistook in a moment of panic for a failed attempt at murder. A second late, she realized that he hadn't struck at empty air; when he withdrew the blade, it was bloodied again, and she heard something collapse with a thud behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, and saw yet another one of the female monsters lying on the ground with its skull split open.

"Thanks," she managed shortly; he seemed not to hear her as he cheerfully went to work on the new corpse.

Setting her jaw, she faced forward again, and found herself suddenly at a loss for what to do next. The creature whose leg she had broken was attempting to claw at her from its vantage point on the ground, but it was easy now to sidestep its long, dangerously sharp nails. If she left it alive, it would follow her, or die a slow, painful death – or, likely, both. She knew she had to kill it. The question was, how.

"Want to borrow my cleaver?" Barry offered a few moments later, having finished his gruesome business behind her. He grinned at her, a lunatic crescent moon of a smile among a star-like smattering of blood droplets. The knife he held out to her gleamed bright crimson in the glare of the flashlight.

She started to reach for her pistol instead, but realized she only had a couple of bullets left, at the most. She needed to save them, in case she and Barry were unlucky enough to run across something even worse than what they had met with thus far. She had her alchemy, of course, but she was loathe to use her bare (or in this case, gloved) hands.

She tentatively held her hand out for the cleaver.

But just as he was about to place it in her palm – "No. You do it. Please." She pulled her hand back, folding her arms across her chest as she stepped out of his way. "But make it quick."

The corners of his mouth twitched at the small triumph – she had _almost_ gone for it! – but when she turned her face away, he simply shrugged and replied, "As you wish!"

She allowed him roughly thirty seconds with the body before snapping at him to clean up and move on before anything else followed the trail of blood to their location. As they continued on towards the church, she remained silent and deep in troubled thought, caught on the idea that maybe she wasn't so different from her estranged brother Connor after all. Both of them, it seemed, were willing to let others do their dirty work for them.

Up ahead on the left, she saw the Family Butcher shop; she had not realized when looking at the map that it was on the way to their destination. As they neared it, her pace slowed, her thoughts suddenly taking a different direction.

Barry looked at her, then followed her gaze to the shop. "Oooh, the butcher shop! I've been there once already. They have an absolutely _splendid_ collection of tools – mine is better though, of course," he added quickly, patting the handle of his cleaver as if to soothe it.

"Really," Kate said absently, coming to a standstill when they reached the shop front. The name _Family Butcher_ was painted across the top in large, red, no-nonsense print; one half of the double door entrance stood at an awkward angle, hanging off its hinges and slightly to the side, while the other had been knocked off completely and now lay on the tiled floor just inside. There was a large set of windows to the right of the doors, one of the upper panes of which was shattered, but the curtains (which were ragged and stained with dried blood) were drawn across them and nothing could be seen inside.

Just over the broken doors was scrawled a short message, written in what Kate guessed was most likely more blood (because really, at this point, what else would it be?). Directing the flashlight upward, she read it aloud: "'In this hole lives the Wicked King.'" She paused. "Somehow, that is not a comforting thought."

"Ha! That wouldn't be referring to ME, would it?" Barry asked, clearly hoping that was exactly the case. "I'm touched!"

"I doubt it's meant to be a compliment. I don't think it's about you, either." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, torn between the desire to go in and the instinct to leave. "I get the feeling whatever it is might actually be _worse_ than you."

Barry frowned. "Worse? How so?"

"As in, more dangerous and less inclined to follow my lead."

"MORE dangerous? What could be MORE dangerous than the infamous serial killer Barry the Chopper?" he demanded, his feathers clearly ruffled by such a suggestion.

"I don't know," Kate said, "but I don't think I want to find out."

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><p><strong>Chapter 3 Commentary<strong>

**The title of this chapter** comes from the third line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129. The rest of the phrase here is, "Till action, lust / Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, / Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight…" (It goes on, but that's the highlight for you.) A bit obvious, I suppose, but works best for this chapter as it applies to Barry _and_ Kate (and their togetherness, for the record… muahaha), not to mention Silent Hill in general.

**_"From childhood's hour I have not been / As others were; I have not seen / As others saw; I could not bring / My passions from a common spring." – Edgar Allan Poe_**

This is from the first stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "Alone." I thought it fitting for both our lovely protagonists.

**_"Oh, I'm not myself / My God, what have you done? / Oh, the memories of them keep coming home…" – Akira Yamaoka & Mary Elizabeth McGlynn_**

This are some lines from the song "Blow Back" off the _SH: Origins_ soundtrack. It's a pretty good snapshot of Kate's state of mind (at least, the small, rational voice in the back of her head, anyway), with the last bit about "memories" making a nice, vague reference to… oh, I don't know, memories from Barry's past, perhaps? And we're not done yet…

**_She wasn't much of a religious person, but she couldn't help vaguely hoping that the whole "this is holy ground" rule of horror stories would apply in Silent Hill._**

Too bad the churches in Silent Hill tend to be among the most evil places in the entire town. Good thing Kate doesn't know anything about the Order or she'd run screaming in the opposite direction. Or torch the place. (Or both.)

**_In a town where shadows looked like blood and the dead were neither silent nor still, the (relative) peace of their journey could not last for long…_**

This is an allusion to the first verse of the song "Hole in the Sky" from the _SH: Origins_ soundtrack. The full phrase (if only I could have used it all) was: "Shadows that look like blood/Death as far as the mind goes…"

**_Just then, her radio began emitting static._**

In case you haven't noticed yet… the radio, although generally useless for actual communication, is actually still quite a helpful advance warning tool in Silent Hill. This is true in pretty much any of the games as well.

**_There was a shadow down the alleyway to their left that was approaching them with an odd, uneven sort of loping gait; it was much too tall and upright to be any sort of cat._**

Meet my latest creations, the Striders – named after their funny walk, and poor Elizabeth Stride, one of the canonical five victims of Jack the Ripper. They're here to represent those "twenty-three dead birds" of Barry's past (hence their feminine characteristics). I designed the Striders to be particularly animalistic, what with the sounds they make, their gait/posture, the claws, and their tongues (eurgh!), as a reflection of being butchered like animals (and the bluish tint of their skin is like that of something drained of blood). Their long hair is inspired by the vengeful onryōs of Japanese folklore (think _The Ring_ or _The Grudge_, or better yet just look it up), and also a nod to the ghost of Cynthia Velazquez in _SH 4: The Room_. Striders' mouths, in particular, are inspired by the Uttuku of ancient Sumerian lore, who are described thus: "Evil being, evil face, evil mouth, evil tongue" (check the Alû entry in Wikipedia for the rest of the poem). The forked aspect of the tongue could also represent a lot of things… I'll leave it up to you to divine those things for yourself. :)

**_The corners of his mouth twitched at the small triumph – she had almost gone for it! – but he simply shrugged and replied, "As you wish!"_**

Having a serial killer quoting _The Princess Bride_? I am a terrible, terrible person. (Interesting choice though, Barry. Considering that what Westley really meant when he said "As you wish" was…)

**_"'In this hole lives the Wicked King.'"_**

Yet another serial killer quote (and odd memo – how did someone write that high up on the wall, anyway?), and it's verbatim, taken straight from David Berkowitz, AKA the Son of Sam. If I'm not mistaken, this was just one of many strange scrawlings found on his walls; the phrase caught my eye and I knew it was too perfect not to use. Also, holes are kind of a theme in Silent Hill; this is sort of a nod to the "There was a hole here... it's gone now" from _Silent Hill 2_. Oh, and Kate's right, by the way. Barry is so NOT the "Wicked King." D:


	4. When The Cards You've Played Divide

Like I said, I am going to finish by Halloween if it kills me. Flip the Jackal switch, it's time for BEAST MODE! Here's Chapter 4 for y'all... and if you've been dying (ahaha) to know the significance of the title, "Here Comes a Candle," well then, today's your lucky day. ENJOY. 8D

Also, a quick note: if ever it seems like I spend an unorthodox amount of time describing the various monsters I've created here, remember that there is a method to my madness, which extends beyond the mere desire to utterly and unequivocally horrify you (and myself, in the process). My designs for all of the monsters incorporate a hefty amount of symbolism relating to both Barry and Kate, as well as references to other monsters and characters from the _Silent Hill_ series as well. If you've been reading the chapter commentaries, you already know this; if not... well, now you know. :P

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, except a certain amount of self-loathing inspired by my own foolish, self-inflicted deadlines. Less than a week before Samhain, and at least two, maybe three chapters yet to write. Urghhh...

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><p><strong>Chapter 4: When the Cards You've Played Divide<strong>

_"Carefully cutting the man open made him think, 'This is how father must feel about his craft. Being an artisan, relying on one's skill to perform something so delicate, grants a certain form of pride.'" – Mikael Hedberg_

_"My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance." – Jack the Ripper_

In spite of Kate's misgivings, they entered the butcher shop. "What are we doing here, anyway?" Barry asked as he followed her inside. "Had a random craving for – oh, oh _my_. I wonder if this is the handiwork of that 'Wicked King' guy? He sure must be an interesting fellow."

Kate had halted so suddenly he had nearly bumped into her before he, too, had seen what had caught her attention. The light of the flashlight was trained on something lying on the front table of the shop, which had been cleared of all merchandise to make room for it. The object on the table was, as far as they could tell, a body lying on its right side – or at least, what remained of one.

Like the things in the automail shop and the women-like creatures from the street, this too took the general form of a human being, albeit majorly distorted. Unlike the others, however, this thing wasn't about to attack them any time soon. Upon closer inspection, it appeared as though it had been something like a pair of Siamese twins (sans legs, Kate noted with a grimace: the torso simply tapered off into nothing) joined back to back: the side facing the door was distinctly feminine, while the side facing the wall was more masculine in shape. The two sides had been joined together not only by flesh but by the tight bindings of a scarlet ribbon; both, however, had been severed by a blade of some sort, leaving a bloody gap between the two.

The arms of the female side were crossed over its small breasts, with both hands clutched tightly around its own neck. The place where its eyes should have been was covered by the ribbon, and the mouth was curved downward in an exaggerated grimace. The male side, on the other hand, had a mad grin on its face and arms which sprawled freely out, ending in a pair of butcher's drag hooks in place of hands.

Kate felt uneasy as she gazed at their butchered body, a feeling which only intensified when she began to wonder if it was not the sight of the mutilation alone which caused the feeling, but something else more akin to familiarity. It tugged at the edges of her brain uncomfortably; rather than face it head-on, she shook her head hard and turned away, forcing her thoughts back on their original track.

"We're not here to sight-see. I came to get some tools."

"Tools?" As she treaded carefully around the counter and began searching behind it for something, it suddenly dawn on him what she meant. "Ahhh, you mean a butcher's tools. How delightful."

"Don't get too excited. This is purely for self-defense. I'm not going to turn into a killer like you."

"But you already ARE a killer like me! You shot that thing in the automail shop, didn't you? It was dead as a doornail by the time _I_ got there." She faltered, shaken, and he leered at her from across the counter. "Now you've got a taste for blood. You want _more_, don't you?"

She set her jaw. "No. That was self-defense. I didn't want to, and I certainly didn't enjoy it. Stop trying to screw with me – it's not working."

"Oh REALLY? Why so tense, then, my dear?"

"Because—" She bit back a sharp retort, her teeth clicking together as she stared him down. She balled her hands into fists so that he wouldn't see they were shaking. "It's this place. It's those monsters. It's the whole damn situation. The sooner we're out of here, the better." She was about to ask him where a butcher kept his tools, when she spotted a large cimeter knife lying on the far end of the counter. Surprisingly, it was clean – and, as she found when she tested the edge against her left thumb, extremely sharp. "That'll do," she muttered to herself, slipping it carefully into her belt.

The silence that hung in the air was suddenly interrupted by a bout of white noise, making Kate jump. The noise from the radio, however, was not pure static this time, as it had been when the monsters had approached them on the street; through the static, she could make out voices, which grew gradually clearer as they listened.

_"Help! Somebody, anybody, help!"_ cried a woman's voice; from the sound of it, she was fairly young, in her late teens or early twenties, perhaps. She was panting heavily, and they could hear the sound of her heels clacking hard against cement as she ran; her voice was drenched in terror.

_"No good, no good, everyone's asleep!"_ a man's voice called after her mockingly. The static distorted his voice, but nevertheless, it didn't take long for Kate and Barry to recognize the owner of the voice. Their suspicions were confirmed a moment later when he burst out in a mad, menacing laugh – only one person either of them knew laughed like that.

"What? But that's—" started Barry with wide, disbelieving eyes. "How the hell…?"

Kate couldn't seem to form words; she listened, with the same undivided attention one gives to a horrific train crash. She wanted to turn away, but she couldn't.

The woman's footsteps halted abruptly, and they heard her gasp in horror_. "Oh no, no, no,"_ she groaned; they guessed she had hit a dead end. The footsteps of the man following her grew louder as he drew closer. _"Please, don't_—_"_

_"Now, now, don't cry. No use crying over spilt blood. It'll all be over – well, relatively soon, anyway."_ The man giggled. Kate cringed.

_"No – please! I'll do anything! Just don't kill me! What do you want?"_

_"This. Just this. This is what I live for – THIS is what I am. A butcher. Now, HOLD STILL!"_

_"No!"_ She started to scream, faltered, and screamed again, louder, this time in agony. The man's laughter and the girl's cries slowly faded back into the static.

Kate seemed to be staring at Barry, but her eyes were unfocused and did not follow his movements. "I knew it. I _knew_ it. That girl… that _voice_…"

"How did it do that?" Barry queried, not quite spooked but certainly concerned. "That was _years_ ago…"

"She—" Suddenly Kate's eyes focused, not on Barry but on something behind him. He turned, and saw a large shadow looming just outside the window. Kate shut off the radio hastily, and in the silence that followed, they could hear the distinct scraping sound of something metallic and sharp dragging along glass, as the shadow moved past the window towards the door.

Automatically, Kate seized Barry by the arm and dragged him around to her side of the counter, and dragged him down to the floor with her, pinning him sharply with his back against the cabinets beneath. "What are you—" he began, but she clamped her hand firmly over his mouth, preventing any further speech.

Behind him, she saw the following words had been written on the cabinets in some sort of white, chalky substance:

_HERE COMES A CANDLE TO LIGHT YOU TO BED,_

_HERE COMES THE CHOPPER TO CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD._

She shut her flashlight off with her free hand, plunging them both into an almost absolute darkness. Barry could no longer see her, but he could feel Kate's breath on his cheek, and he could feel her pulse beating wildly through her wrist as she pressed against him. She hissed in his ear, "Please. Don't. Move."

He didn't understand what it was they were hiding from, or why indeed she was telling him to hide when he could easily have chopped whatever it was to bits… but something in her voice made him willing, at least for the moment, to comply.

Truth be told, she was not quite sure herself what it was precisely that had had instantly triggered her flight, rather than fight, response. There was nothing to suggest this thing, whatever it was, was any more dangerous than the creatures which they had previously encountered, yet the metallic shriek it made against the glass had the same, panic-inducing effect on her as the sound she had heard outside of the electronics store. Since both had also been preceded by the sudden emission of static and conversations from the past from her radio, she guessed both noises had come from the same source.

The question, then, was what exactly this source was.

The metallic screeching stopped, and the only sounds left behind were Kate and Barry's hushed breathing, the sound of their own erratic heartbeats in their ears… and heavy footsteps as whatever-it-was stepped across the threshold and into the room with them. It was torture not to risk a glance at it, and worse still knowing just how close it was: no more than ten, maybe fifteen feet away.

The footsteps ceased as it came to a stop directly in front of the counter; here, it lingered, as if deep in thought – or as if it sensed something was amiss. They could just barely hear it breathing; it made a soft _shhh_ing sound, as though its mouth were covered by something: a filter, perhaps, or a cloth. There was another sound, too, which, once she heard it, made Kate's blood run cold: a quiet, occasional dripping noise, like a leaky faucet. She doubted very much, however, that this sound was caused by water.

It moved again, turning to the right and heading for the end of the counter. She tensed, and she felt Barry's arm move as he lifted his cleaver, both of them bracing themselves for the inevitable confrontation.

But just as the thing reached the far end of the counter, a noise outside the shop gave it pause. It sounded like the whining of a dog, but just a little off; Kate realized it was most likely another one of those female creatures from earlier. Moving quickly now, the thing in the shop turned and made for the doorway; a few moments later, they heard distant, high-pitched shrieks coming from down the road outside the shop.

Kate removed her hand from Barry's mouth and switched her flashlight back on. She looked at him only briefly, before averting her gaze and standing up abruptly. "Come on. We've gotta move before that thing comes back. Let's see if there's a back door."

"I've got a better idea. How about _you_ look for a back door, while I go see what makes that thing tick." Barry started to head for the door, only to find himself yanked back sharply (and rather painfully) by the elbow.

"No. You're not going after that thing. Just… just follow me." When he hesitated, she snapped, "Now!"

"Oooh, look at that temper. You know, you're kind of cute when you get all bossy like that. I could just…"

"Don't. Just – don't."

Turning away, she headed through the door behind the counter without bothering to look back to check if he was coming. He glanced back over his shoulder at the front door for a moment, considering his options. At length, he turned his back to it as well, and followed after Kate.

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><p><strong>Chapter 4 Commentary<br>**

**The title of this chapter** comes from the lyrics of "Hell Frozen Rain" from the _SH: Shattered Memories _soundtrack. The full verse goes, "There is a moment in time / When all the cards that you've played divide / You feel the temperature dive / And all your demons inside come crashing through…"

**_"Carefully cutting the man open made him think, 'This is how father must feel about his craft. Being an artisan, relying on one's skill to perform something so delicate, grants a certain form of pride." – Mikael Hedberg_**

This quote is actually in-game text from the game _Amnesia: The Dark Descent_; Hedberg is credited as the writer. I originally didn't plan on using references to games other than _Silent Hill_, but I watched a walkthrough of this game the other day and it completely blew me away, and this passage was just _begging_ to be used. I can't make any promises on how much of Barry's back story (that I made up) you're going to get in this fic, but there will be hints, at the very least. This is one of them.

**_"My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance." – Jack the Ripper_**

This comes from one of a handful of letters police received that were attributed to the most infamous serial killer of all time, Jack the Ripper. This particular line is taken from the letter known as the "Dear Boss" letter. (Finally, my morbid interest in the case comes in handy. XP)

**_Upon closer inspection, it appeared as though it had been something like a pair of Siamese twins… joined back to back: the side facing the door was distinctly feminine, while the side facing the wall was more masculine in shape._**

Yet another of my Frankenstein's monsters. These, dear reader, are called Inverted Angels: inverted referring to the way they hang upside down (when they're not lying dead on counters in butcher shops), as well as the idea that they are an inversion of traditional angels: evil instead of good, dark instead of light, etc. (What is an inverted angel, literally? A demon!) The "angel" bit is a reference to the angel of death and just plain being dead. The way they hang upside down is also meant to mirror the way meat is hung up in a butcher shop. As for their physical appearance… well, you guessed it (at least, I'd like to think you did): that's basically Kate and Barry, in monstrous form. They're also a nod to the Siam monsters from _SH: Homecoming_, which were in turn symbolic of James and Mary Sunderland from _SH2_. Since there's a lot of symbolism here, I'll try to take it line by line.

**_The two sides had been joined together not only by flesh but by the tight bindings of a scarlet ribbon; both, however, had been severed by a blade of some sort, leaving a bloody gap between the two._**

The scarlet ribbon is the red string of fate in East Asian mythology; the idea is that the two who are bound together are destined to be together, similar to the Western concept of soulmates. Although generally this is meant romantically (and I can't say I didn't have that thought in mind), in this case I was going more for the idea of an inescapable fate: according to the mythology, the string can be twisted and tangled, but never broken. Notice on the Angels that it binds them together painfully tightly, and that (when alive) the male side scratches at the bindings… in much the same way Barry still sometimes resists following Kate's lead. Also, the division between them (not just the cut but the way they are almost two beings) is symbolic of divisions, within themselves and between each other.

**_The arms of the female side were crossed over its small breasts, with both hands clutched tightly around its own neck. The place where its eyes should have been was covered by the ribbon, and the mouth was curved downward in an exaggerated grimace._**

The female form's agony and apparent attempt at self-suffocation symbolizes Kate's desperate determination to keep a lid on her darker impulses, even if it kills her. Barry's influence, amusing though it might be at times, tends to bring out the worst in her, making it that much harder for her to fight it. The ribbon hiding the eyes, of course, is symbolic of Kate's determination to turn a blind eye when it comes to Barry: she thinks she knows what he is and what he's capable of, but at the same time she does her utmost not to think about his past or what he's done.

**_The male side, on the other hand, had a mad grin on its face and arms which sprawled freely out, ending in a pair of butcher's drag hooks in place of hands._**

The "mad grin" represents Barry's insanity, plain and simple. The male form's freely swinging arms and countenance symbolize Barry's lack of self-restraint and how he's embraced his dark side; its hook-hands are a reference to butchery as well as his obsession with violence.

**_Kate felt uneasy as she gazed at their butchered body…_**

Somewhere, deep down, I think she's got the feeling that there's some sort of connection between the monsters and herself (and Barry). Problem is, the monsters are never manifestations of the good things in people – only the bad parts…

**_She was about to ask him where a butcher kept his tools, when she spotted a large cimeter knife lying on the far end of the counter_.**

Cimeters are large, curved knives that butchers typically use when cutting larger cuts of meat down to pieces of more manageable size.

**_He turned, and saw a large shadow looming just outside the window_.**

Now THAT sounds more like a Wicked King to me. Good thing Kate is smarter than James Sunderland (_SH2_) and turns her flashlight OFF when bad things are afoot, or else this might have been the last chapter. D:

**_HERE COMES A CANDLE TO LIGHT YOU TO BED, HERE COMES THE CHOPPER TO CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD._**

Aha! Finally, the title of the fic becomes relevant – as promised. Now for the info I promised would go along with it. As I said before, this comes from the old English folk song and children's game, "Oranges and Lemons." Yes, these are real lyrics to it. Old fairytales and folk songs were damn scary, man. This is also a reference to the Till Receipt memo from _SH: Origins_, which featured the same lines but replaced the word "chopper" with "butcher" to refer to the Butcher enemy in the game. More importantly… here we have the reveal of the name of our creepy, metal-screeching, thus far faceless stalker of doom (no, the Wicked King was not my official name for him): the Chopper. And no, the chopper line was not meant to refer to Barry directly… but there is a definite connection. (Also, sorry if I got your hopes up, but no, the screeching metal sounds were not made by Freddy Krueger – OR Pyramid Head. Although this is a definite nod in that general direction.) Remember what I said about the monsters being connected to the characters' psyches and whatnot. You'll see…

**_...Kate realized it was most likely another one of those female creatures from earlier. Moving quickly now, the thing in the shop turned and made for the doorway; a few moments later, they heard distant, high-pitched shrieks coming from down the road outside the shop._**

Like Barry, the Chopper has a preference for female victims.

**_She looked at him only briefly, before averting her gaze and standing up abruptly_.**

It's one thing to hang around with a mad serial killer whose hysterical tirades are usually more amusing than threatening; it's another thing entirely to look him in the eye after listening to him mercilessly murder a young, innocent girl.


	5. Mad in Pursuit and in Possession

Heeeeeere's Chapter 5! The end draws near...

**Disclaimer**: Yeah, yeah. I own nada, blah blah blah... let's just get on with this, shall we?

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><p><strong>Chapter 5: Mad in Pursuit and in Possession<strong>

_"He had turned angry. It was easy to take her insolence and make her the villain in this story. But she didn't deserve to die. Even he could see that." – Mikael Hedberg_

_"Murder is not about lust and it's not about violence. It's about possession." – Ted Bundy_

As soon as they stepped out of the shop, their vision suddenly darkened, and the sound of sirens split their ears and drove pikes into their brains, and both Kate and Barry clutched at their heads as the world went away. When the sirens and the pain faded and the world came back again, they discovered it had changed again; gone was the eerie, reddish tinge of the light, and the air was permeated with fog once more.

"What is WITH that, anyway?" Barry complained, rubbing at the lingering soreness in his temples irritably.

Kate shook her head; she was done with trying to figure this place out. It was like trying to make sense in Wonderland; the harder you tried, the bigger your headache. It was easier just to accept some things were the way they were because that was the way it was done, and let it go at that. Without a word, she simply continued to lead the way down the street.

Whether it was due to the transformation or (less comforting) the proximity of the monster which hunted other monsters, the remainder of their journey to the church was relatively uneventful; once, they were accosted by another of the half-flesh, half-automail monsters, but Barry quickly dispatched of it, and they pressed on as though this sort of thing was routine (and indeed, it was beginning to feel that way).

Finally, they saw it. It would have been easy to miss, were they not looking specifically for it; this was no cathedral of towering spires and enormous stained-glass windows, but a small, sandy-colored building with one large, circular window hovering over a pair of ruined wooden doors. There was no light or noise from within to suggest any sort of human presence aside from their own.

"Hellooo?" Barry called out in a sing-song voice. "Anybody hooome?"

Silence.

"Hunh. Maybe they're not here, after all."

Kate sighed. "Maybe they just don't trust strangers." This time, she didn't hesitate to approach the entrance; unlike the previous buildings, however, these doors were not going to budge: they were stuck fast together, and much too thick and heavy to simply push out of the way.

"Want me to chop a way through?" Barry offered.

She ignored him and, clapping her hands together, pressed her gloved palms to the doors; with a series of loud cracks, they fractured, split, and fell to the ground in a pile of wood chips and splinters. Since the stealth of their mission had already been compromised anyway, between Barry's shouting and her alchemy trick, Kate didn't bother with caution as she kicked aside some of the debris when crossing the threshold.

The interior of the church was not as dark as she had expected; someone had gone to the trouble to light a few candles near the door, and a handful more at the end of the aisle.

"Hello?" she called out. "Is anyone here? We're not here to cause trouble – we just—"

Kate was cut off abruptly as a shot rang out; a glance back at the wall behind her revealed that the shooter had been aiming for Kate's head, and moreover, had been mere inches off the mark. If they got a second chance, they would not miss; knowing this, Kate ducked down low, dragging Barry down with her as she crouched behind a pew.

"How rude!" Barry remarked indignantly. "How dare they shoot at…"

"Shut it." To their invisible assailant, Kate said, "Listen – we're not here to hurt you! We're just trying to figure out what happened to everyone! We're just two, regular people. We're not… monsters." She hoped whoever it was had not noticed the way she'd faltered, ever so slightly, on the last word.

"Stand up where I can see you!" a voice yelled; it sounded like a woman, and there was a distinct strain of fear behind her militantly authoritative tone.

"Won't you just shoot at us again?" Barry called back, frowning. He didn't appreciate being shot at the first time, and was loathe to repeat the experience.

"I said stand up!"

"We will," Kate said, "but if you do shoot at us again, just know you're not the only one here with a gun. I used to be a state alchemist, and…"

"A state alchemist? As in, from Amestris?" They heard the woman getting to her feet; from the sound of it, she was in the same row of pews as they, but closer to the front of the room. "What is your name?"

"Kate Steele. When I had a title, I was the Reconstructing Alchemist." Slowly, Kate stood up as well, one hand on her gun; Barry followed suit, with his cleaver ready in hand.

Kate saw that the woman still held up her gun – a rifle, of all things – but that it was, thankfully, no longer trained directly at her head. The woman wore simple street clothes, a plain t-shirt, jeans, and boots, just like Kate, but it was clear from the way she held herself, and spoke, and handled her gun, that she was, or had been, part of the military as well. She had long dark hair, and blue eyes, and though she must not have been much older than Roy or Hughes, thin spider-web lines of worry creased her face, making her seem older and more tired than she probably was.

"Who are you?" Kate asked. "And how long have you been here?"

The woman paused. "Lieutenant Juliet Douglas," she said at length, "or, at least, I was. I don't know how long I've been here."

Barry looked mildly bored now, but Kate's eyes widened in recognition and surprise. "I've heard that name before. Didn't you fight in the war with Ishval?"

The woman finally lowered her gun, but the look in her eyes was deadly dark. "Yes, I witnessed that massacre. Oh, God… Don't tell me you were there too?"

"No, but my father was. I don't mean to pry but… have you been here since the _war_? From what I heard, you… well…" Kate trailed off uncertainly.

"What?" Juliet demanded. "Deserted? Went MIA? Disappeared?"

"Well… yeah. All of those. Were you here this whole time?"

While they talked, Barry began to wander about the place, searching, Kate suspected, for some creature or another to chop for amusement, since the thread of conversation had long since lost him. She kept one eye on him as she met Juliet halfway down the row of pews.

"I don't know. Maybe," Juliet said. "Time gets funny when you're constantly on alert. You stop keeping track of days; you're just grateful when nighttime ends and the sun comes out again."

Kate raised her eyebrows at that. "The monsters don't come out in the day?"

"Some do. Just not as many. Usually you can find somewhere to hide from them though, at least for a couple of hours. Long enough to get some sleep, and a decent meal if you're lucky."

Now that they stood closer together, Kate could see how thin the woman was, how starkly her cheekbones stood out in a face that had gone gaunt with prolonged hunger and fear. "Why haven't you left? Why stay here if things are so bad?"

"There's nowhere to go," Juliet said simply, as though this was a fate she had accepted long ago.

Behind Juliet, Kate saw that something had caught Barry's eye; he seemed to be looking with great interest at something on display behind the large pulpit at the front of the room. Shining her flashlight in that direction, she saw as he moved out of the way that the thing he had been inspecting appeared to be a giant death's-head moth, its wingspan nearly the length of her arm. It was pinned to the wall by an oversized, rusty nail driven through its center.

"What… what do you mean, there's nowhere to go? Why can't you just walk away?" Kate asked, fumbling for words as she tried to put the image of the moth out of her mind. _Just what kind of church is this, anyway?_

Juliet gave her a scathing look. "Trust me, I have been asking myself that ever since I got here. I was beginning to think I was in my own, personal Purgatory." She shook her head. "And who knows, maybe I am. What did you do to get sent here?"

"Sent here? No, we just sort of ended up here," Kate said. But even as she spoke, she wondered if maybe there wasn't some truth to what Juliet was saying. Had it really been a mere coincidence that she and Barry had just "ended up" in Silent Hill? "Look, it doesn't matter how we got here. What matters is what happened to the rest of the people who must live here. Do you know where they are?"

"Around, I suppose," Juliet said vaguely. "Hiding. Praying they won't be found."

"Shouldn't you all stick together? What about safety in numbers?"

Juliet gave her a level look. "Then we'd be easier to find. And kill. Safety in numbers only works if you outnumber the enemy."

Kate swallowed hard. _How many monsters are there in Silent Hill?_ It hadn't occurred to her to wonder before, but suddenly, it seemed important.

"A town full of lambs," Barry remarked, glancing back at Kate with a gleam in his eye. She spared him a quick glare before looking quickly back to Juliet.

Juliet frowned, finally noticing the butcher's knife in his hand. "What did you say his name was?" she said to Kate.

"Ehm… Barry." She watched Juliet's face carefully for a reaction. Although Barry no longer looked anything remotely like he had in his first body, Juliet had been gone for a long time. Kate wasn't sure if she had heard of Barry the Chopper, or, if she had, whether she even knew what he looked like. "My, er, cousin." _Hunh, come to think of it… I don't even know his last name._

"Right. I take it he's not part of the military."

Kate shook her head, the corner of her mouth twitching a little at the irony. "Nope. He's… just a civilian."

"JUST a CIVILIAN?" Barry huffed, wandering past them to check out a noise he'd heard towards the back of the room. Perhaps it was one of those little rat-like creatures he'd seen around town; they didn't make for very good chopping, but they were sort of fun to chase. More fun than sitting around _talking_ all day, anyway.

"Listen," Kate said, ignoring him, "The three of us can't be the only ones left in this town. Come with us. If we keep looking, maybe we can find someone who can tell us what happened here." _And how to fix it,_ she couldn't help adding in her head. She knew this town was not her responsibility, but…

"What good would that do? It doesn't matter now. I don't _care_ what happened – all I want is to get _out_." Juliet hoisted her rifle up, resting it against her shoulder. "Unless you can work miracles, I don't see any reason to—"

Her next words were lost in a sudden burst of static from Kate's radio – and from a military-issued radio hanging from Juliet's belt as well.

Juliet's eyes widened. "We made too much noise," she said, shutting her radio off and backing away from Kate, her finger on the trigger of her rifle as she waved it around, searching for a target. "Something's coming! Turn off your radio, quick!"

Before she could switch it off, a voice coming through the static made Kate hesitate, her hand hovering over the button as she listened.

_"Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something…"_ said what sounded like a female voice.

_"Not now, honey." _That was Barry's voice, Kate knew; she recognized it from the very first syllable. But who was the woman? _"I'm a little busy at the moment."_

_"You can talk and carve the ham at the same time, can't you? Anyway, this is serious. You've been acting sort of…"_

_"Sort of what?"_

_"Well – odd," _said the woman at length._ "Not yourself."_

"What the hell is this?" demanded Juliet, staring in bewilderment at Kate and her radio. "Whose voices are those?"

Kate held up a hand. "Wait…"

_"Oh, really?" _said Barry's voice on the radio._ "I hadn't noticed."_

_"Don't mock me. I told you this is serious. I'm worried about you. Is everything… okay?"_

_"You mean aside from your constant nagging? Really, would it kill you to keep your mouth shut for once? You're distracting me. If I cut myself, it'll be YOUR fault."_

_"Yeah, right. You won't cut yourself; you've had more than enough practice with that thing. You could probably carve that ham in your sleep. Actually, that's kind of what I meant…"_

Kate thought she heard the distinct thud of a knife coming down hard on a wooden cutting board._"What? Have I been sleepwalking with my cleaver or something?"_

"Hey," said Barry, making his way over to Kate and Juliet from across the room. "Hey, turn that off…"

"Did you hear me?" Juliet said. "What the hell is going on?"

Kate ignored them both, completely caught up in the radio conversation. She had a feeling she _knew_ who the woman was…

_"What I meant was your work… you've been at the shop a lot lately, working long hours and overtime when you don't need to. And then when you come home… it's like you're not really home. The other day you spent half an hour just staring at the cutlery in the kitchen; do you remember that?"_

_"So what?" _the Barry on the radio shouted, a dangerous edge in his voice coming through even the white noise loud and clear.

"I said turn that off!" the real Barry said as he drew closer; Kate shook her head once, but otherwise barely seemed to notice him.

_"Look," _the woman said, sounding nervous now, _"I just think maybe you could – I don't know, take some time off? I just think getting away from that place might be good for you. We could go somewhere…"_

_"You want me to quit, is that it? You want me to quit the one thing in life that I actually enjoy – well the answer is NO! You just can't accept it, can you? THIS IS WHO I AM!"_

_"Honey – please – put the knife down—"_

The woman screamed. Kate nearly screamed too when Barry's hand suddenly came out of nowhere and shut the radio off; she hadn't realized he was standing so close. Automatically, she stepped away from him – something she had never done. But it was the look in his eyes that did it. For the first time since she had met him, she saw real anger in them, mixed with something close to alarm.

"I _told_ you to shut it off," he snapped.

The fact that he was visibly upset confirmed her suspicions about the woman's identity. She turned a sickly shade of white as she took another step away from him.

But if she and Barry were disturbed, Juliet was downright hysterical as she pushed past them. Aiming her gun at them now, she was backing away down the aisle towards the door with a wild look in her eyes that said she would shoot if they made any wrong moves. "That man – on the radio – he murdered that woman… he murdered her in cold blood! Who was that? And who are you? Tell me the truth!"

"Juliet," Kate said shakily, holding up her hands, "don't… I don't know why that happens, but I know whenever we hear it…"

Somewhere outside, not too far down the street, she thought she heard a drawn-out, metallic screech, like metal scraping against metal.

Kate shook her head. "Juliet, listen, we can't stay here! We have to…"

"That man on the radio – that was your voice, wasn't it?" Juliet shouted, gesturing to Barry. "You killed that woman, didn't you?"

Barry shrugged. "Maybe. What's it to you?" He sounded like his usual self again, and only traces of the former expression on his face remained.

"Wait, don't go—!" Kate's plea as she started to move forward ended in a cry when Juliet pulled the trigger, a bullet blasting through the space between them with a loud _BANG!_

There was a brief, dull moment of realization – then, pain. Kate cursed loudly and clutched at her shoulder, wincing as blood began to leak through her shirt, staining her fingers red.

"Don't come any closer! And don't follow me! You're just as bad as them – both of you! If I see you again, I won't hesitate to shoot!"

"No," Kate said through clenched teeth, "you don't understand—"

But Juliet was not listening. With one last warning glare at Barry, she turned and ran out of the church. A few moments later, they heard a shout, and another shot rang out, followed by two more. Then, Juliet began to scream.

"No!" Drawing her pistol, Kate bolted for the door. But just as she reached the threshold, something suddenly dragged her back; with a grip much stronger than one might expect from his rather lean frame, Barry clamped one hand over her mouth and held his cleaver to her throat with the other.

"You stay here," he muttered, forcing her back away from the door. Outside, they could just barely make out the sounds of Juliet's cries, which had already begun to turn to moans.

Though her voice was muffled when she tried to speak, Barry understood that Kate was asking him something along the lines of, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" followed by an adamant, "Let me go!"

"What? Do you suddenly have a death wish?"

She bit his hand; grimacing, he moved his hand to her shoulder (the uninjured one), but kept his knife pressed steadily against her jugular. "Are you trying to save me, or murder me?" she hissed. "Let me go!"

Lightly, as if he were asking about the weather, Barry said, "Do you get the feeling we're being followed?"

"What are…" She blinked. He was right. First it was the electronics store, then the café, and now the church. This thing, whatever it was, had not been aimlessly roving around town; it was after something in particular. Them.

Which meant that Juliet's death was _their_ fault.

She jerked forward, trying to get away from him to go after Juliet, but he only tightened his grip and pressed the knife more firmly against her neck. She fell still when she felt a pinprick of pain, and a trickle of blood sliding down past her collarbone.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered. She still couldn't tell whether he was helping her or getting ready to betray her. But if he was going to kill her, why had he waited so long?

"Because you're MY prey," he said in a low voice. "You're too interesting to waste on some mindless beast, or whatever that thing outside is. No one gets to chop you except ME."

The screaming of the victims on the radio echoed through her mind, and she shivered. It would be so much easier for him to kill her than she had ever let herself realize. So why hadn't he? "I don't belong to you. And I'm _not_ your prey."

He laughed. "See? That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"What? You're not making any sense." Outside, the sounds of Juliet's torture had subsided. It wouldn't be long before the thing that had killed her reached the church. "We have to go," she said, her voice barely audible now.

He let her go. Pulling away, she looked at him for a long moment, making real eye contact with him for the first time since the incident at the café. He had saved her – _again_. But, like always, it wasn't clear whether that had been his intention or simply an added bonus. Either way, she still wasn't ready to thank him. Not when there was so much that was wrong… with everything.

Quietly, they made their way to the opposite end of the church. There was a brief moment of panic when she realized there was no other door – then, she remembered her alchemy. Deciding speed was more important than stealth at this point, she clapped her hands together, and then against the wall, which crumbled under her touch like packed dirt, leaving behind a hole just big enough to pass through. Together, they quickly climbed over the rubble, and ran from the church as fast as their feet would carry them.

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><p><strong>Chapter 5 Commentary<br>**

**The title of this chapter** comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 129, yet again, because Shakespeare is awesome, and because this sonnet is too sexy for its time period. Or something like that.

**_"He had turned angry. It was easy to take her insolence and make her the villain in this story. But she didn't deserve to die. Even he could see that." – Mikael Hedberg_**

Another one from _Amnesia: The Dark Descent_. And again, this one was too deliciously perfect to ignore. In more ways than one.

**_"Murder is not about lust and it's not about violence. It's about possession." – Ted Bundy_**

Yet another Ted Bundy quote, although this one's only partial. The full quote is, "Murder is not about lust and it's not about violence. It's about possession. When you feel the last breath of life coming out of the woman, you look into her eyes. At the point, it's being God." Did the temperature just drop twenty(three) degrees, or what?

**_…gone was the eerie, reddish tinge of the light, and the air was permeated with fog once more._**

Back to Fog World again. Yay?

**…_this was no cathedral of towering spires and enormous stained-glass windows, but a small, sandy-colored building with one large, circular window hovering over a pair of ruined wooden doors._**

The church as described here is based on the Church of the Rebirth, which appeared (but could not be explored in-game) in _Silent Hill 2_. It is smaller, and much less ornate, than the Balkan Church or the church featured in the first movie. Just because I'm not going into the mythology of the Order here doesn't mean they don't exist at all…

**_"Lieutenant Juliet Douglas," she said at length, "or, at least, I was..."_**

Yeah. I went there. Anyone who watched the 2003 _FMA_ anime probably went "WTF" right about the time they read this line, and then followed it up with an, "OMG HOMUNCULUS AHHH." I am here to assure you that this Juliet Douglas is not, I repeat, NOT the homunculus known as Sloth. For the most part, when it comes to the _FMA_ stuff, I am sticking with what was true in the manga and in _Brotherhood_. This is a rare exception. My idea behind this incarnation of Juliet is that, in the anime, when Sloth took up this identity, she may well have stolen that identity from a real soldier – perhaps someone who had just enlisted but never showed up (because Gluttony ate her)… who knows. Point is, this Juliet Douglas is real, and human. Yes, I did make her look like Sloth/Trisha Elric, but this is pure… well, laziness. (How fitting.) She is not meant to be related to either Sloth or Trisha in any way. And no, she did not take the shot that sparked the war with Ishval; she did, however, participate in the war. Well, some of it. I brought her in as a sort of extremely vague nod (she's a lieutenant – _sorta_ like a police officer?) to Cybil Bennet from _SH1_ and _SH: Shattered Memories_, as well as the movie.

**_"What?" Juliet demanded. "Deserted? Went MIA? Disappeared?"_**

Silent Hill has a tendency to draw people to it that need to reconcile with some terrible thing, either something in their past, or something within themselves. Usually, this forced facedown with fate either ends up saving them, or completely destroying them. My idea for this version of Juliet Douglas is that during the Ishval Rebellion, she had to do a lot of terrible things (didn't they all…), and she ended up killing a child by accident (this was after the war had already begun, though, not the catalyst that started it). This finally caused her to break down and desert… and end up in Silent Hill, still trying to run from the ghosts of her past. See, not facing your fears in Silent Hill is often just as bad as signing your own death-warrant… because one way or another, they're bound to catch up with you sometime, whether you're ready or not.

**_"There's nowhere to go," Juliet said simply, as though this was a fate she had accepted long ago._**

Another dangerous side-effect of trying to sidestep your Silent Hill-prescribed fate: you tend to find yourself trapped there until you face it, one way or another. This lends itself to the very idea which Juliet expresses a few lines of dialogue from here: Silent Hill acts almost as kind of an earthbound-purgatory, where the skeletons in your closet come after you in the forms of monstrous (and monstrously symbolic)… er, monsters.

**…_the thing he had been inspecting appeared to be a giant death's-head moth, its wingspan nearly the length of her arm. It was pinned to the wall by an oversized, rusty nail driven through its center._**

Symbolism! The insect part refers to the theme of insect symbolism in the games, which is related to Alessa's penchant for collecting bugs. I chose a moth because they are specifically connected with darkness and night-time, and – get this – "knowledge of the Otherworld" (don't believe the coincidence? Check out the moth entry on !). The reason I chose a _death's_-head moth should be fairly obvious. Its appearance as a bug nailed to the wall, similar to the way collectors pin insects beneath glass, reflects the way Barry felt when he was being used as an experiment – and, more significantly, the way he sometimes feels when Kate starts asking too many questions. Alternatively, it could also be my way of throwing in some terrible sexual symbolism for Kate, seeing as it is specifically _nailed_ (not pinned or stapled or even taped) to the wall. Ahaha ha. Ha. Ehhh… I know, I'm a horrible person. XP

**_The fact that he was visibly upset confirmed her suspicions about the woman's identity_.**

Yep, Kate's got it right. Did you? I'll give you a clue: she was his very first kill. Back in "Sixty-Six," Kate tried to get Barry to talk about it, but he never quite gave her a straight answer… and now he's having a fit because she overheard part of what happened. Seems like his feelings about this particular murder are a _teensy_ bit more complicated than his usual attitude about killing…


	6. A Worm at the Heart of the Tower

Getting VERY close to the end now... I'm planning on only one, maybe two chapters more here, depending on how the pacing goes. Which is good, considering I've only got tomorrow and the day after to keep my promise of finishing this up for Halloween... XP Anyway, here you go, Chapter 6 (6, 6? hahaha), which takes place in our most favoritest of all Silent Hill locations... *cries* This time, we get a small glimpse into Barry's past, PLUS we finally get a good look at a certain stalker who's been following us - er, them - since Chapter 1... 8D

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. Not that I'd really want to, at this point. Hospitals, especially this one, do not sit well with me. Not at all.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6: A Worm at the Heart of the Tower<strong>

_"There's not a single person here who's right in the head. Not just in this hospital – I mean in all of Silent Hill. Except me." – Stanley Coleman_

_"All of the monster you are / I can feel in my head…" – Akira Yamaoka & Mary Elizabeth McGlynn_

When they stopped running a few blocks later, Barry asked Kate, "Well? What now?"

"I don't know," she said between breaths. "I don't…" She shook her head, grimacing and holding onto her bloody shoulder. Pulling her sleeve down over her shoulder, she saw to her (relative) relief that she had only been grazed; it would not be necessary to dig out the bullet. "We can't leave yet." Taking off her gloves for a moment, she performed a standard repairing transmutation to seal up the wound.

Barry raised his eyebrows at her. "Oho, _this_ coming from the same person who said this place wasn't our responsibility and that she didn't _care_ what happened here? Tell me, what changed your mind?"

"Juliet died because of that thing that's chasing us." Tugging her gloves back on, Kate pulled her sleeve back up and looked around, checking for signs of any monsters nearby. "Whatever happened here may not be our fault… but something we did made that thing come after us, and that _is_ our responsibility. We have to keep trying to find the others who are left here, so that we can warn them, and hopefully together we can figure out how to set things right." As she spoke, she pulled out the map, and started to look it over. She frowned.

"You never change, you know that? You're still trying to fix everything, and you still don't know when to quit, do you? You really think you can fix all _this_?" Barry gestured to the town with a wave of his arm. "Who says it needs fixing in the first place, hmmm?"

She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe it's _supposed_ to be like this. Ever think of that, little Miss Reconstructing Alchemist?"

Juliet's comparison of Silent Hill to purgatory drifted through her mind again. She wanted to argue with him, but she couldn't deny that it did almost seem like there was some sort of method to the madness surrounding them… but what that method was, she couldn't say. "It doesn't matter. We're still going to look for the others. We'll figure it out from there."

Barry shrugged. "Fine. So, where to next? The cemetery, perhaps? I'm sure we'll find quite a few of the residents _there_."

She rolled her eyes. "No. I… I know where we have to go. I just… wish it was anyplace else." She pointed at the map; looking over her shoulder, he saw that a red circle had been drawn around a building labeled _Alchemilla Hospital._

"I didn't draw that, either. I'd ask if you did, but the map's been in my pocket the whole time."

Barry blinked. "Oooh. That's… somewhat creepy."

She shot him a blank stare.

"Well, no point putting off the inevitable, eh? Let's go!" Checking the map once more, he turned and started heading down the road that would lead them to the hospital.

Kate followed him dubiously. "Why are you so excited? Oh, wait, let me guess… you're hoping to find more 'prey' along the way."

He flashed her a wide grin over his shoulder.

She didn't return it. "Barry… about that woman on the radio, back at the church…"

He didn't slow down or look back at her again, but she saw him square his shoulders, and when he spoke, there was a sharp edge in his voice that hadn't been there a moment before. "What is it?"

"That – that was your wife, wasn't it? That was when you…" He cut her off before she could say it.

"Yeah. That was her." Cheerfully, he added, "Annoying, wasn't she? That's all she did, ALL the time – nag, nag, _nag_. Honestly, she's lucky I put up with her as long as I did. Most people would have chopped her after just one _day_!" He barked out a laugh.

"How long was that?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"How long were you married?"

He paused. "Two years, I think. Or something like that. Why?"

It was her turn to shrug. "Just… curious." She waited a few moments, then asked, "What was her name?"

This time he hesitated for an instant, then began walking a little faster. "Tch. Don't remember."

"Liar. You're not _that_ much of an idiot. What was her name?"

"If I tell you, will you SHUT UP about it? Geez, you're as annoying as she was!"

Kate ignored the way her pulse stuttered a little at that. "For now, anyway. Barry, just tell me her name."

"Why?"

She folded her arms, the way people do when they're shielding themselves from a cold wind. "Because… that way she won't just be a voice I heard on the radio. She'll be more of a person." _And because up until now, I've been ignoring the fact that you once murdered twenty-three people,_ she added silently. _I ignored the deaths of twenty-three innocent victims, and I'm not so sure I can do that anymore. I'm not sure that I _should_._

"She's _not_ a person," said Barry. "Not anymore. She's _dead_."

"But that doesn't change the fact that she once existed. She'd dead, not erased. Barry, please, what was her name?"

He was silent for a long time, and she began to worry he wouldn't answer her at all. But at length, very quietly, she heard him say, "Ann. And she _deserved_ it."

After that, they lapsed into a heavy silence, broken only when the occasional monster got in their way. For the most part, Kate let Barry take them down, only lending a hand if he looked like he needed it, but never actually killing any herself.

Eventually, they reached Alchemilla Hospital. It was a towering, grey, foreboding fortress of an institution, and looked about as welcoming as a barbed wire fence. No light shone from within, and the usual sounds of running electricity and living, breathing people were absent from the scene. The occasional sounds they _did_ hear did not sound very human at all.

Kate remembered the way Juliet had been hiding out in the darkened church – a few candles had been lit, but that was all. Perhaps it was the same here – perhaps there _were_ people inside, but they were being discreet out of fear of attracting the attention of the monsters. Either way, she knew she was going to have to check, just to be sure.

But that didn't mean she necessarily _wanted_ to go in.

Barry seemed even less enthusiastic than she. "On second thought… how about you go on in, and I'll go back and check the butcher shop? Who knows, maybe we missed someone!"

Kate snagged the back of his collar before he could escape. "No way. Splitting up is the worst thing we could do. I'm going in, and you're coming with me."

"I don't want to!" he yelped as she began to drag him towards the entrance. "I hate hospitals – I hate doctors and nurses and needles and medicine and most of all SCIENTISTS, and I am NOT GOING IN THERE!"

"Get a hold of yourself!" Kate ordered, yanking hard on his collar to cut his rant short by (briefly) cutting off his air supply. As he worked to catch his breath, she added in a calmer voice, "Look, I get it. I know this is probably bringing back some bad memories. But I can't go in there alone, and I can't have you running off either. Look at it this way… you'll probably find some new things to chop in here." She grimaced at the morbidity of what she had just said. "Eh… Besides, I doubt there are many practicing doctors left in this place. And if there are, they'd be too busy helping the people here to do anything to you."

He continued struggling, but when it became clear she was adamant on this subject and was not about to let him get away any time soon, he finally relented and followed her inside, grumbling all the way.

There was no one at the front desk, of course, and no one in the waiting room. Kate tried the lights, but, following standard horror story protocol, they barely flickered for an instant before lapsing back into darkness. "Hello?" she called out, bracing herself in case anything human or otherwise attacked them. Nothing happened. She tried again. "Is there anyone in here? We're not going to hurt you – we're here to help!"

While Barry ambled through the waiting room area, Kate checked behind the front desk. There was no one there, but there was a large yellow post-it note on the counter which stood out to her. Picking it up, she read it to herself:

_"Pure eyes, blue like a glassy bead—_

_You are always looking at me _

_and I am always looking at you."_

It was in the same handwriting as the other notes she had found. Like the first, it was poetic, and eerily personal, rather than just a random scrawling on the wall that anyone could have found. It was for her, she knew it… and not just because the author had gotten her eye color right. She glanced at Barry; he couldn't have written it, could he? She didn't know why, but she felt like it had to do with him, too, although it was clearly meant for her to find. Not knowing why she did it, exactly, she folded the note up and stuck it in her pocket, alongside the first note she had found in the car.

Finding no signs of anyone at all in the lobby, they checked the map of the building they found posted on the wall near the front desk. After briefly perusing it, it was decided they would check the doctor's office down the hall first, and then start working their way up the levels until they found someone… or until it became clear there was no one to find.

The door to the doctor's office was wide open. As she approached it, white noise began to issue softly from Kate's radio. Cautiously, she took the first step inside. She barely took three steps before something suddenly swung down from the ceiling and attacked her, barely missing her jugular with its hook-like hands as she ducked.

"Barry, look out!"

It clawed at him too, but he was quicker, and tore a deep gash in its stomach before it could do him any real damage. Shining her flashlight on it from a safe distance, Kate saw that it was the same sort of monster as the one she had found dead in the butcher shop, hanging upside down from the ceiling and very much alive – for now. The male side was facing them, giggling even as it clawed at the wound in its stomach and the red ribbon which bound it to its other half. As it twisted about, Kate glimpsed the female side's face, and thought that she heard it sobbing quietly, and moaning.

Barry seemed to pause for half a beat, staring at it, before lashing out again; Kate looked away before she could see what he'd done to it, but she could tell from the sounds it made, and the silence that followed after, that he had killed it. Without a word, she left the office with Barry close on her heels.

"Now what?"

"Upstairs," she said, heading for the elevator. She didn't trust it, any more than she trusted anything else in such a godforsaken place, but they had no choice; the other side of the door to the stairwell seemed completely blocked by what looked like a cave-in: the hospital, like the rest of the town, was falling to pieces.

Once inside, she saw from the elevator keypad that there were three levels, plus a basement. She winced, knowing she should check all the floors… but she _really_ didn't want to go down into the basement. Not in _this_ hospital. She pressed the button for the second floor, and tried not to panic when the doors closed.

The elevator rose at a creaky, uneven pace, like a poorly assembled ride at a fair. "Are you sure this was a good idea?" Barry asked, looking nervously about.

"Not really," she answered honestly.

The elevator reached the upper floor. Halting jerkily, the doors started to slide open. They stuck about halfway open, and suddenly the elevator itself dropped about a foot down. Kate swallowed a scream.

"Well, that was—" Barry began, but just then a familiar darkness began to spread over their eyes, and the sound of sirens permeated the air as they clutched their heads in pain.

"No… not here," Kate groaned, bent over double as she tried, vainly, to block the noise of the sirens from her ears. Then she let out a shriek as the elevator suddenly dropped.

Trapped in darkness and wracked with pain, it was nearly impossible to tell how far the elevator fell, but they both knew after a moment that they had definitely passed by both the first floor and the basement. How were they still falling? And how much farther would they go?

Finally, the elevator _SCREEEECH_ed to a halt, which hurt their ears even though the headache and the darkness had already faded away again. Shining the flashlight around, they saw through the mesh sides of the elevator that the walls of the shaft, which had been unremarkable before, were now oozing with blood and a horrible texture resembling melted flesh.

Checking the keypad revealed two extra buttons that Kate swore had not been there before: a second and third basement level, the latter of which was lit up and had a bloody fingerprint on it.

"No… Oh, no, no, _no_…" Kate groaned. The transformation she had been praying would never come had not only happened at the worst possible time – it had trapped them in the worst possible place in the hospital.

"From now on, I vote we take the stairs," Barry remarked.

Kate knew she could probably fix the elevator if she tried, but it would require climbing up into the elevator shaft, and that was something she was not prepared to do. Instead, with Barry's help, she pried the elevator doors open and stepped out. As terrified as she was of what might be lurking in the basement, she knew it was worse to stay in the elevator and risk being trapped and killed. They had no choice but to keep moving forward.

Kate tried not to look at the stains on the floor, which looked as though something large and bleeding to death had been dragged down the hall, and she did her best not to notice the way everything was pulsing here too, like it had the last time this had happened – only, here, the effect was more noticeable, and more disturbing than ever.

"Wonder what's down here?" said Barry idly.

This level had not, of course, been on the map up on the first floor; there was no telling what was down there. Choosing a door at random (the sign marking what the room was had been ripped from the wall), Kate opened it and walked inside.

And instantly regretted it. "Oh… God… _really_?"

It was, from the looks of it, a crematorium. The room was filled with gurneys, and onb top of those, bodies, all covered with dirty and bloodstained sheets that might once have been white. Strangely, all of the sheets had numbers written in blood near the feet of the bodies.

Barry made a beeline for the gurney marked with a big red 1 near the back of the room.

"What are you doing?" Kate exclaimed.

"I think I saw something move back here," he called back.

Kate shook her head, and started to go after him, then came to a dead stop when she bumped into one of the gurneys. Unlike the others, this one did not have a body on it; the covers were pulled back, as though it was just a bed, waiting for someone to crawl into it. On the sheets was the number twenty-four.

She shivered violently, feeling as though someone had just walked on her grave. She remembered what the voice on the phone had said. _"I thought you said your name was Barry? Or is it… number twenty-four?"_

She backed away, towards the door. "Barry…" she called out shakily. She saw that he was standing beside the first gurney, staring at it hard, as though waiting for it to do something. "Come on, we've gotta…"

Out in the hall, a voice cried out. It sounded like a woman's voice, and she sounded like she was in pain.

Barry bolted for the door.

"Barry, wait!" Kate chased after him. Her radio had begun

"I KNOW THAT VOICE!" she heard him shouting ahead of her. Another one of the two-faced monsters dropped down from the ceiling near him, but he barely spared the time to take a swing at it, killing it in one blow, in his rush down the hall.

Kate ignored it as she ran past it, focused solely on Barry. She hadn't seen him this manic since he'd gone after his body, back in Central City. "What are you talking about? Barry, WAIT!"

Static gushed out of her radio at full volume, and she stumbled in surprise and lost her footing. Blood coated her hands and knees as she fell forward onto the ground; looking up, she just managed to catch a glimpse of Barry jumping down through a hole in the floor – down to yet _another_ lower level.

Through the white noise, she could hear voices shouting – screaming. And there, at the end of the hall, a dark shape rounded the corner. As it did so, it scraped something along the glass window in one of the doors, creating a loud metallic screeching sound which carried easily to her ears even through the sounds of the screaming on the radio.

Kate felt as though her insides had dropped out of her, like she was falling into herself. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could only watch as it advanced slowly down the corridor towards her. As it came into the range of her flashlight's beam, she got her first look at the thing which had been chasing them – no, just _her_, she realized in horror when it passed by the hole in the ground without so much as a glance at it. It wasn't interested in Barry at all.

It had the shape of a man, and it was tall, at least seven, maybe even eight feet tall from the look of it. Its arms were lean rather than just skinny, and covered in red tattoos which reminded her of the deconstructing transmutation circles on her gloves – but much more detailed and elaborate. Its skin was ripped in places, like fabric that had been stretched until it tore, and from these wounds oozed black blood, which caused an occasional dripping sound as it leaked from its body onto the floor.

She saw now that the thing it had been using to make the scraping sounds was a cleaver, just like Barry's… but much larger. It moved with a bizarre, almost graceful walk, as though it was following some sort of choreography for a dance. Its body was covered with a butcher's apron, faded to the kind of colorless grayish-green color that clothes turn when the original color has been so ruined that it no longer exists. Its head was partially covered as well, with a black cloth not unlike the hood of an executioner, which left the lower half of its face exposed; its mouth was split into a wide, horrific Glasgow smile.

It drew nearer, and nearer, and as it did Kate's nose filled with an off-putting, metallic sort of smell, like iron, or…

_Drip. Drip. Drip. SKREEEEECH…_

The sound of its knife again against another door was what finally did it. Sucking in a great gulp of air, Kate screamed, and pushed herself back up onto her feet, tearing back down the hall at breakneck speeds. She had just enough presence of mind not to go to the elevator; instead, she turned down a corridor she and Barry had passed by, praying for another stairwell or even a working elevator.

Against the odds, this wish was granted; at the end of the hall, she found a second stairwell which was not blocked by rubble – although the door was locked, she quickly kicked it down and headed up the stairs. She didn't stop running until she had reached the first floor – spotting a women's bathroom on the right, she skidded inside, perspiring heavily and completely out of breath. As she gasped for air, she drew a quick transmutation circle on the door and fused it to the wall; backing away, she put her back to the wall and slid down to sit on the floor, feeling utterly spent.

Her radio had fallen silent again, but the screams still echoed in her head… and she was lost, and terrified, and utterly, utterly alone. Shivering violently, she pressed both hands tightly to her mouth to mute the screams and the tears she could no longer hold in. A single thought ran through her head over and over again, relentlessly:

_I'm going to die. I'm going to die here. I'M GOING TO DIE..._

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><p><strong>Chapter 6 Commentary<br>**

** The title of this chapter** comes from a line in Neil Gaiman's poem, "Instructions." The full line is this: "There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand." It's about corruption, a shadow within that is holding you back, that you need to overcome in order to stand up tall – or it will eat away at you from the inside until there is nothing left, and you cannot stand at all. It has so many applications, and it is damn beautiful. Like everything he writes. (Neil Gaiman is THE light of my life, if you couldn't tell.)

**_"There's not a single person here who's right in the head. Not just in this hospital – I mean in all of Silent Hill. Except me." – Stanley Coleman_**

Ah, one of my favorite characters from _Silent Hill 3_! The Stanley Coleman Memos were sort of a side-quest deal; if you don't find the first one, you never see the rest, so even people who played the third game might have missed him. You never get to see him in the game; he leaves Heather tons of creepy love-letter type notes, only to end up as "number 7" in the crematorium.

**_"All of the monster you are / I can feel in my head…" – Akira Yamaoka & Mary Elizabeth McGlynn_**

More lyrics from "Hole in the Sky," off the _SH: Origins_ soundtrack. Oh, how I love this line.

**_She pointed at the map; looking over her shoulder, he saw that a red circle had been drawn around a building labeled Alchemilla Hospital._**

Alchemilla Hospital (aka my own personal hell T_T) first showed up in the original _Silent Hill_, and has since appeared in _SH: Origins_, _SH: Homecoming_, and _SH: Shattered Memories_ as well. For the most part it's portrayed as a medical hospital but in _Homecoming_ it was more of a mental hospital; my version is a little bit of both, but leaning towards the asylum idea, for maximum (horrible) effect. Terrible, terrible things are guaranteed to happen here. In particular, this hospital was fitting for this story because of its name: alchemillas are plants, and are related to _alchemy_. Oh, and as for the red circle, that was my own little joking reference to the way that, in some of the games, the location you need to go to next is marked on the map for you. I'm assuming that was probably just the protagonists' doing, but I figured, eh, Silent Hill likes to screw with people, and it's the little things that count, after all. :)

**_But at length, very quietly, she heard him say, "Ann. And she deserved it."_**

No, he doesn't mean she deserved her name (what would that even mean, anyway?); he means she deserved to be killed. It took me a long time to decide on a name for Barry's wife; I wanted to use another voice actress, but none of the remaining names of the ones I knew seemed to fit – so then I was going to name her after Jerry Jewell's (Barry's English voice actor's) wife, if he has one – only he's a very private person, and I can't even determine if he's married, much less what her name might be. In the end, I named her after Mary Ann Nichols – the first of the canonical five Jack the Ripper victims to die. I used her middle name because calling her "Mary" was way too close to the whole James and Mary (and Maria!) story from _SH2_. Plus I just like the name Ann, although usually I'd spell it with an "e" on the end. *shrug*

**_"Pure eyes, blue like a glassy bead— / You are always looking at me / and I am always looking at you."_**

More from my beloved Stanley Coleman. This is a piece of a very long poem he left for Heather that also served as a riddle-puzzle in the second-floor patient wing, if you set the puzzle mode for the game to Hard. The original poem really did use the color blue for the eyes… it just fit so perfectly since Kate has blue eyes that I couldn't possibly resist. (But no, that is not the ONLY reason I used it. Stanley is not leaving these for Kate… this is most likely just one of those Silent Hill things, like the phone call… but nothing in this town is ever completely random. Even the weirdest, most unexplainable things have some meaning to them. Kate's feeling that this has something to do with Barry is probably right on the money.)

**_Once inside, she saw from the elevator keypad that there were three levels, plus a basement._**

This version of Alchemilla Hospital is really a cross between Alchemilla and Brookhaven Hospital, which appeared in Silent Hill 3. Generally I used the floor plans from Alchemilla for reference, but the elevator and number of floors is based more on Brookhaven… especially the Otherworld version of it.

**_"Well, that was—" Barry began, but just then a familiar darkness began to spread over their eyes, and the sound of sirens permeated the air as they clutched their heads in pain._**

Back to the Otherworld! And in the hospital, no less! Yay! (Because that's totally the reactions players had when this transformation happened in the games. There's no place creepier than what we affectionately refer to as the 'Nightmare Hospital' setting, let me tell you. XP)

**_It was, from the looks of it, a crematorium._**

The crematorium was one of THE worst places to go through in SH3, at least in my opinion. I nearly panicked… and I didn't even play the bloody game. So, naturally, I had to include it. And yes, as I explained before, the numbered gurneys are a big _SH3_/Stanley Coleman reference, although in this context of course they're there for a completely different reason… (Yes, all _twenty-four_ of them, including the empty one.)

**_She saw that he was standing beside the first gurney, staring at it hard, as though waiting for it to do something._**

Kate's got her own reasons for being freaked out by the twenty-fourth gurney (thank you, Happy Birthday Caller voice!). Barry, on the other hand, is more intrigued by number one… in the context of everything that's been happening, it puts him in mind of his first kill. And who knows, perhaps he heard something while he was over there… (Sorta like how Heather heard Stanley whisper her name when she stood near his gurney in _SH3_.)

**_Its arms were lean rather than just skinny, and covered in red tattoos which reminded her of the deconstructing transmutation circles on her gloves – but much more detailed and elaborate._**

Finally, the Chopper shows his face. Well, er, sort of. Anyway, this being THE monster of all monsters in this story (our own personal Pyramid Head, if you will), naturally there's a lot of symbolism in his design, so as I did with the Inverted Angels, I'll go one bit at a time. For one thing, I chose to make this guy lean, rather than a big hulking muscle machine, because it lends him – er, it? – a greater level of similarity to a certain other "chopper" we know (and love). As for the markings on his arms… that's not functioning alchemy, but it is very similar to Kate's circles, and, more importantly, to the destructive half of Scar's alchemy. This of course is meant to invoke the whole destruction idea (fairly obvious), plus the innate fear (most) people have of killers like Scar… and Barry.

**_Its skin was ripped in places, like fabric that had been stretched until it tore, and from these wounds oozed black blood, which caused an occasional dripping sound as it leaked from its body onto the floor._**

Lovely, right? The wounds are meant to invoke the image of someone who has been placed on a delightful little medieval torture device known as the rack. As in, someone who is being torn in opposite directions. (This could apply in several ways to either Kate or Barry.) The blood is black to symbolize corruption, and/or darkness – and also, it's my fun little reference to the black blood in _Soul Eater_, which spreads madness and threatens to take over the bodies and souls of anyone it infects. 8)

**_She saw now that the thing it had been using to make the scraping sounds was a cleaver, just like Barry's… but much larger._**

A Chopper is only as good as his cleaver. Or something like that.

**_It moved with a bizarre, almost graceful walk, as though it was following some sort of choreography for a dance. Its body was covered with a butcher's apron…_**

Remember how the Nurses walked in the _Silent Hill_ movie? Well, this is not THAT crazy, but along those lines. This is mostly just to drum up the creeper effect, but also to make the Chopper a little less masculine… because Barry, at least in his current form, is not exactly the _most_ masculine person in the story. (Sorry, Barry, you're a casualty of my interest in androgyny.) Also, I have this vague idea that the Chopper, for all his similarities to Barry, also embodies a little bit of Kate as well – that dark part of her that meshes so well with Barry's personality. As for the butcher's apron… I should think that part's obvious.

**_Its head was partially covered as well, with a black cloth not unlike the hood of an executioner, which left the lower half of its face exposed; its mouth was split into a wide, horrific Glasgow smile._**

The Chopper is to Kate as Pyramid Head is to James (SORT OF)… as the thing down the hall is to Barry. (Hahaha, no straight answers for you here!) Pyramid Head and the Butcher (and now, the Chopper) are all sort of the executioners of Silent Hill, taking down humans and monsters alike. _Everything_ is afraid of them. Oh, and a Glasgow smile is a wound that's made when a person's face is split from the corners of the mouth to the ears (think Black Dahlia, or Heath Ledger's Joker – without the stitches). This is to reflect the idea of pain and pleasure together, as Barry takes pleasure in other peoples' pain, and his pleasure in this causes Kate pain… and so on. It also splits the face in half, thereby symbolizing divisions (internal and external), as well as hysteria, for obvious reasons.


	7. If You Gaze Into the Abyss

Next to last chapter, guys! Hope it came out well... it's a little difficult to concentrate today as I'm feeling a bit feverish... (Still came to school in full costume, though - Heather Mason cosplay FTW!) Anyway, thanks again to all my lovely readers, including (but not limited to) **Hemotypsis**, and most recently, **Leminer**, whose constructive criticism was mucho welcome (although I wish I could do something about it, it's a bit late now... but it's good for future reference, so thanks lol!) along with the compliments. :) (Also, in answer to your question about Kate, Leminer, yeah, she's an OC. This is actually the third part of a fanfic series of mine featuring her and Barry... "Sixty-Six" is the first in the series, followed by "Feelings," followed by this. ^^)

Also, Leminer reminded me of something I should have said sooner: y'know those chapter commentaries I include at the end of each chapter? I only mean those to be guidelines, not actual rules. Part of my reason for including them is that I really enjoy reading all the symbolic interpretations of the monsters on the Silent Hill Wiki, so I thought it might be cool to include something sorta like that in my fic. However, the symbolism is really still up to the reader in the end... you guys will probably come up with even cooler meanings for some things than I did, plus I gotta be honest, I didn't include everything in the commentary anyway, because (a) I am lazy and (b) it was just way too much to write. So yeah, read the commentary (or don't), but don't take it as the final word. I'd be more than happy to hear more interpretations for anything I've written here, besides what's in the commentaries! :D

Anyway, read on, dear readers, and review if you've got a moment. Also... HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 8D

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing! BLAH!

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><p><strong>Chapter 7: If You Gaze Into the Abyss<strong>

_"When this monster entered my brain, I will never know, but it is here to stay. How does one cure himself? I can't stop it, the monster goes on, and hurts me as well as society. Maybe you can stop him. I can't." – Dennis Rader_

_"If you turn around here, / you can walk back, safely; / you will lose no face. I will think no less of you." – Neil Gaiman_

A sudden burst of static from the radio sent a shock through Kate's system like a bolt of lightning. Hastily she switched it off… but after a moment the static came back again. Cursing aloud, past reason and past caring, she seized it and threw it with all her strength against the opposite wall, where the cheap plastic casing abruptly shattered, and fell to the floor in a loud clatter.

Even so, an instant later, the static came back again.

Kate bowed her head, covering her ears. "Shut up, just shut up…" she groaned; she had had enough of cryptic messages and voices from the past and, above all, static and monsters. But the static did not go away, and at length, she began to make out voices coming through it.

_"Hey – what is this, some kind of joke?"_ It was Barry's voice again, only he sounded… odd. Scared? "_'Cause I've got news for you – it's not very funny, Meatloaf."_

_"Who you callin' meatloaf?"_ said another voice, which sounded like it belonged to a large man with a short temper.

_"Settle down, both of you."_ It was the third voice that caught Kate's full attention; with wide eyes, she sat up and stared at the radio in disbelief. It sounded like… _"No, this is no joke. You have been selected for exemption from the usual death sentence; you will instead be taking part in a – ah, a special research opportunity. Consider it your lucky day… number Sixty-Six."_

There was no mistaking it. The third voice, which spoke with that same eerily calm tone that Kate thought all scientists must have been taught as part of their training, belonged to none other than her brother, Connor Steele.

_"Huh? What are you talking about? My name is Barry the Chopper, Barry the…"_

_"Yes,"_ said Connor._ "We are all aware of your morbid collection of titles. But that's not who you are anymore. From now on, you are number Sixty-Six. You have no other name. Is that understood?"_

_"Sixty-Six, huh?"_

Barry's voice sounded calmer now, more curious; Kate's skin crawled just listening to the conversation. He had no idea what was about to happen to him… but she did. And that made it all the harder to keep listening – and yet, it was impossible _not_ to.

_"How about Six-Six-Six? I should think that would be far more fitting."_

_"Shut your face. You should just be grateful you're not sitting in front of the firing squad right now!" _snapped the angry man.

_"Oh, I AM, believe me. But… well, what exactly IS this 'special research opportunity,' pray tell?"_

_"It's an alchemical experiment, something no one has ever tried before. And lucky you, you're going to be our first test subject. Mr. Ito, if you would be so kind, please strap him down."_

_"Hey – hey, what kind of experiment is this? What's the suit of armor for? What are you going to do to me?"_ Barry sounded nervous again now, and Kate could hear the faint sounds of a scuffle as the man named Mr. Ito forced him to be strapped into… whatever it was they were fastening him to.

_"We're going to give you a new body,"_ said Connor._ "A better one. You won't age, you won't get sick, and you won't be able to feel pain. You'll be almost immortal."_

_"Well… that doesn't sound so bad,"_ Barry ceded. _"What's the catch?"_

_"You have to guard Laboratory Five for us, along with a few of your fellow inmates."_

_"Will I get my cleaver back?"_

_"We can retrieve the murder weapon from Central's evidence storage," _Connor said with obvious distaste._ "You are not to leave the lab premises at any time, no matter what. You are to deter any would-be intruders."_

_"Deter? Does that mean I get to chop them up?"_

_"Only as a last resort. Mr. Ito, is he secured?"_

_"Yes, Dr. Steele."_

_"Good. Mr. Tucker, are you ready?"_

_"Yes,"_ said a fourth, also male voice, which Kate did not recognize. The name sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

_"Very well. We'll leave you to it, then. Come on, Mr. Ito."_

_"Don't screw this up, Tucker,"_ said Mr. Ito as he and Connor exited the room; he slammed the door behind them with a loud clang.

_"Hey,"_ said Barry a few minutes later, _"is this going to hurt?"_

_"Well… most likely,"_ said Tucker. _"Now… hold still!"_

Barry began to scream. The process of extracting a soul from a living body, while a delicate business, is also a violent one. When Kate had transferred his detached soul from the armor to his new body, that had been easy – but forcibly ripping a living soul from a living body was much, much more difficult.

She had never heard anything scream like that before – like his very essence was being shredded to pieces, like every atom in his body was in agony.

Finally, the screams faded back into the white noise, which then faded into a silence almost more deafening than the screams. Kate stared blankly at the broken bits of the radio, her body gone numb with shock.

When sense finally began to come back to her, the first complete thought she was able to string together was, _Barry. I have to find Barry._

She stood up, wavering a little, bracing herself against the wall for balance. He was a killer, he was a monster, she knew – but he was also human. And her responsibility. And, though she hardly knew how it had happened, she cared for him. She knew now what he was capable of – knew that someday it would probably be the death of her – but she also knew that she couldn't just let him go. Nothing would ever bring back those twenty-three people Barry had killed, and nothing she or Barry could do would atone for them. There was no changing the past; only the future was uncertain.

She was not the same as her brother; she knew what he had once said to her was true: she could not fix everything. She could not fix Silent Hill, nor would she ever probably be able to fix Barry – or herself. But the world was an imperfect place. That was how it was meant to be. Some things were meant to be broken, just as other things were meant to be fixed. It was not her place to decide which was which… but it was part of who she was to keep trying, regardless.

But first, she had to find Barry, and then get the hell out of Dodge.

She took a deep breath, and headed to the door. She paused when, outside, down the hall, she heard the faint metallic screeching that she knew now was the trademark of her hunter. She clenched her fists. She was still afraid; her newfound clarity had not changed that. But she also realized that she and Barry were never going to leave Silent Hill if she didn't face that thing first.

_I need to get it out in the open,_ she thought, trying to remember the layout of the first floor, and where in that layout she was now. _If it's on the left, I'll head for the front entrance, lure it outside. If it's on the right, I'll go for the stairs._

She tried not to think about what would happen if it was waiting for her right outside the door. The scraping sounds had stopped, and she had no way of knowing where it was now.

_I have to move fast._ She counted to three in her head, took a deep breath, then clapped her hands together, then against the door, breaking it down in the blink of an eye. Stepping over the rubble, she looked around hastily for the creature; it wasn't hard to miss. It stood about a hundred yards down the hall, to the right.

She sprinted to the left, towards the stairs.

The muscles in her legs burned from overexertion; she had been on her feet for she didn't know how many hours, and had already run up three flights of stairs during her earlier panic. Her lungs ached from panting and from the dust. Her heart felt like it would burst at any moment. But she kept going – she had no choice. She didn't have to look back to know that she was still being followed; she could _feel_ it coming after her now. It wasn't far behind.

Up one, two, three flights of stairs – finally, she pushed through the door labeled ROOF. As soon as she was through, she turned around and alchemically sealed the door to the wall. Under normal circumstances, this would stop pretty much anything that wasn't an alchemist or a tank, but in this case she figured she had given herself a few moments at the most.

She pulled out the chalk in her pocket; as Barry had said, her alchemy had to count for _something_.

"Come on, _think_," she said to herself when she hesitated, her mind suddenly gone blank. Her expertise in putting things back together was of no use here, but she knew how to take things apart.

Of course, this wasn't a thing. This was a living being. Or at least, an animate one.

_They're not so different from humans, though…_

Suddenly she had it. Two words came to mind; two, simple words, which together spelled one of the greatest taboos an alchemist could commit. But separately, re-imagined into something just as dark, but (incredibly) not forbidden…

Kneeling on the ground, she began to draw, working from memory and praying she could remember enough, just enough to get it right. She didn't think about whether it was right or wrong… she didn't let herself wonder whether the similarities the creatures had to humans was only skin-deep.

She just barely finished the circle before her stalker began to, literally, _chop_ through the door, cleaving the wood as easily as if it were raw meat. It didn't take long for him to get through to the roof.

Although its eyes were covered (if it had eyes at all), Kate could feel it staring at her (or perhaps _into_ her) as they faced each other. She forced herself to keep her eyes on its hooded face, even though it felt like staring into an abyss – anything to keep herself from looking down at the transmutation circle and giving the whole thing away.

The thing took one step forward, then another. _Just a few more steps, that's it,_ she thought, holding her ground and doing her best to ignore the instinct to run. She was shaking now, but she managed to stand firm. She waited, motionless, as the thing slowly advanced towards her.

Finally… _Got it!_ she thought as it finally reached the mark, and dropped to her knees, ready to clap her hands to the circle and perform the transmutation. But with a sudden burst of speed, the monster lurched forward, its butcher's knife headed straight for her head. With a cry, she rolled out of the way and scrambled to get back to her feet. She tried again, with the same results – apparently, this thing wasn't a slow as it seemed. It had merely been taking its time.

_Now what?_ she thought, panicked, as it attacked once again, this time just barely missing slicing off her shoulder.

Meanwhile, seven levels down, Barry was facing his own demon, which, although Kate had not noticed it, had been following him since they'd arrived in Silent Hill. Perhaps she hadn't been listening closely enough, or perhaps it was all in his head, but every now and then he had heard it: a wailing in the distance, a familiar whining sound which brought back far too many memories. He had suspected it at first, but had not been completely sure why it sounded so familiar until he'd heard her voice while standing with Kate in the crematorium.

_Ann_.

Of course, it wasn't her anymore, not really – it was just as he'd told Kate: she wasn't a person anymore. She'd been dead for years. And if this thing really was in any way Ann, or even a part of Ann, she had not aged well underground. The thing she had become was nameless, faceless, and indescribable – a grotesque mockery of a human being, neither really alive nor fully dead. It reeked of death, but unlike the other monsters they'd encountered, it could speak now and then, and when it did it had her voice.

And it grated on his ears just as aggravatingly as it had the last time he'd heard it.

"SHUT UP SHUT UP _SHUT UP_!" he screamed at it, attacking it over and over again. It hung above him from the ceiling like a vaguely woman-shaped spider in a giant web – except the web was part of it, flesh and blood. Whenever he managed to hit it, it shrieked Ann's high-pitched squeal which he remembered so well, and when he missed, it sobbed, and begged for his mercy. Yet all the while, it clawed down at him, with hands that had drag-hooks for fingers; he already had a large gash in his left arm, and a cut just under his right eye that would probably leave a scar.

_"Don't you love me anymore?"_ it wept. He managed to hack through yet another one of the many web-like sinews, and it shrieked, and clawed out at him, crying, _"Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?"_

"I said SHUT UP!" He hacked at it again, and again, and managed to cut off one of its troublesome hands. It writhed in agony, and he laughed bitterly at its pain.

_"Please, Barry…"_ It managed to sink the hooks of its remaining hand into his side; he cried out as it dragged through his flesh, leaving behind a deep, freely bleeding wound.

He redoubled his efforts, chopping away with random, wanton violence at the seemingly endless web of sinews and veins above him, barely batting an eye at the blood dripping down onto his arms and face.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

He was faring little better than Kate, who had begun to sustain similar wounds as her reflexes began to give way to weariness. The thing that haunted her, which reminded her so horribly of everything in Barry that she feared, was much faster than she had anticipated, and it was all she could do just to avoid being cut in two. She hadn't managed to land a single blow on it yet.

But she had to manage something soon, before her strength gave out completely. She couldn't use her usual trick of cracking the ground under its feet, not without breaking the transmutation circle, and there was nothing else on the roof that she could use to transmute into a weapon.

Then, she remembered – _the gun!_ Feeling a fool for not remembering it sooner, she drew the pistol and, leaping back to avoid yet another attack, took aim and fired. She was not the best of shots, and even worse under such pressure, but she managed to clip its right shoulder, which was attached to the hand with the cleaver.

In the brief halting of the onslaught which this caused, Kate took the time to take better aim at it, aiming for its head – and said a little prayer, knowing this was the only bullet she had left. Then, she fired.

_BANG!_

Whether it was luck, or fate, or perhaps both, the bullet actually managed to hit its mark. The creature cried out in pain, with a roar eerily similar to the way Barry's old body had yelled when she'd fought it in that alleyway in Central, something like a thousand years ago (or perhaps it just felt that way) – but it did not die. Not yet. Tossing aside the empty gun, Kate sprang forward, clapping her hands together and then against its shoulders – again it howled in agony as she removed two handprint-shaped layers of flesh. It stumbled backwards… back onto the transmutation circle.

It slashed out at her again, and though it missed its intended mark – her neck – it did not miss her arm. She cried out, but did not waste time trying to heal the deep wound it had inflicted, though she was bleeding profusely. Instead, she dropped down, and finally, _finally_ pressed her hands to the edge of the circle. _Please, let this work…_

There was a flash of blue alchemical light, and for a moment, that was all. Then the thing roared again in anguish as, piece by piece, it began to fall apart. The circle she had drawn on the ground was a combination of a human transmutation circle and a simple deconstruction circle; she had never seen anything like it before, but apparently it worked. She made herself watch as one chunk of meat after another dislodged itself from the thing's body; it was like watching the sped-up version of a flesh-eating virus. But she would not let herself look away, horrifying though it was to watch, and all the while she thought, _I did this. I killed it. I won._

But it didn't feel like a victory. She wasn't sure what she felt – relief, perhaps. And tired; so very tired. As the last of its cries died away, and the last of the flesh disintegrated, leaving behind only a bloody cleaver, she let herself collapse onto the ground, pale with loss of blood and completely exhausted.

It was easy to let the world slip away into nothingness.

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><p><strong>Chapter 7 Commentary<br>**

**The title of this chapter** comes from a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th century German philosopher whose last name will never cease to drive me insane (no matter what I do, I _always_ get it wrong! Thank goodness for spell check). The full phrase is: "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

**_"When this monster entered my brain, I will never know, but it is here to stay. How does one cure himself? I can't stop it, the monster goes on, and hurts me as well as society. Maybe you can stop him. I can't." – Dennis Rader_**

Dennis Rader was better known as the BTK killer, or the BTK strangler. (BTK stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill.") He murdered 10 people between 1974 and 1991, and would send letters describing the murders in detail to the police and to newspapers. He was arrested and convicted in 2005, and is serving ten consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

**_"If you turn around here, / you can walk back, safely; / you will lose no face. I will think no less of you." – Neil Gaiman_**

All good things end in Neil Gaiman. This is also from his poem, "Instructions."

**_Mr. Ito, if you would be so kind, please strap him in._**

The guy strapping Barry in for the experiment is no one of real consequence, but all the same I went ahead and named him after Barry's Japanese voice actor for the 2003 anime, Kentaro Ito, for the lolz.

**_"Good. Mr. Tucker, are you ready?"_**

I have no idea how long ago Barry was supposed to have been captured and turned into armor, but I'm going to hazard a guess that this is physically possible. Yes, the Mr. Tucker of this scenario is THAT Shao Tucker, the Sewing-Life Alchemist. Connor isn't as good of an actual alchemist as he is just a scientist, and moreover, as we already learned, he's not one to get his hands dirty. Tucker, on the other hand, has expertise when it comes to screwing with nature and living beings, and is obviously _not_ adverse to getting his hands dirty when he deems it's necessary. (I hate Tucker. XP) Kate never met Tucker, but I'm sure she's heard of him… it's just that, at the moment, she's far more concerned with what she's hearing, rather than where she's heard his name before.

**_She sprinted to the left, towards the stairs_.**

Notice how Barry went to the lowest level possible to face his demon, whereas Kate chose to go up the stairs to the roof instead. This was done intentionally, and I'll leave it to you, dear readers, to deduce the reason for yourself.

**_But separately, re-imagined into something just as dark, but (incredibly) not forbidden…_**

Human. Transmutation. Well, sort of.

**_She didn't think about whether it was right or wrong… she didn't let herself wonder whether the similarities the creatures had to humans was only skin-deep._**

Kate may have taken the high road, but in Silent Hill all roads lead to hell, no matter how paved they may be with good intentions. She's overcome her road-blocks with Barry, at least for the most part, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's becoming a better person. Doesn't necessarily mean she's becoming more evil, though, either… Evil, after all, is in the eye of the beholder, and on the moral compass, there isn't always a true north. There's a fine line between accepting the darkness within and letting it take over…

**_Of course, it wasn't her anymore, not really – it was just as he'd told Kate: she wasn't a person anymore._**

This was a last-minute addition to my little Silent Hill bestiary; originally, I hadn't planned on revealing much about Barry's fight or about his monster at all. But then I started to feel like that was cheating you guys out of something, and I knew at the very least I had to allude to it… then this scene happened. I guess the name for this one is the Memory of Ann, since this is the one monster that has a direct connection to a specific character. I'm purposely trying to be a bit vague with her, but I'll elaborate on the few things I did mention: the web-like flesh is sort of a "black widow spider" allusion, although really it's Barry who's the widow(er). Also, webs have a tendency to cling to you, even though you'd really rather they didn't… sort of like the memory of Ann for Barry. As for the drag-hook fingers… again, these are used to snag onto things, and it's difficult to get them out once they're in. The reason she's suspended from the ceiling is (a) this is an allusion to the way her memory hangs over him (at least in the back of his mind), and (b) Barry wasn't kidding when he says she nagged him all the time. In life, she was probably a teensy bit overbearing.

**_The thing that haunted her, which reminded her so horribly of everything in Barry that she feared…_**

Exactamundo, Kate my dear. That's _exactly_ what the Chopper's all about.


	8. To Kindle a Light in the Darkness

Well, well, here it is at last... the final chapter. My apologies for the long and unexpected wait... I know I promised Halloween but this darn disease (and by disease I mean common cold -_-) got the best of me for a few days there and I just couldn't concentrate well enough to write this chapter. As it is I'm still sick, actually... but c'est la vie, and the show must go on! Or rather... not, as this is the last chapter. Anyway...

Thank you once again to all my kind reviewers! It's been so lovely not to have to deal with any flamers or anything like that; I appreciate all of your kind comments and helpful criticism, and most of all that you took the time both to read and to respond to my writing. Your encouragement is what made this story happen, and what spurred me on all the way through to the end! So thank you, one and all... Good night, and good luck! (And please let me know what you think of the end! I hope it's not too much of a letdown... ^^; )

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing. I am part of the 99%. (I am also a terrible person for making that joke. But I just couldn't help it. XP)

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><p><strong>Chapter 8: To Kindle a Light in the Darkness<strong>

_"We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the boogeyman." – Anthony Hopkins_

_"I don't feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt." – Ted Bundy_

The darkness, which a moment before had seemed so infinite, did not last forever after all. Kate did not go willingly back into the harsh, cold reality of that night, but rather felt as though she was forcibly dragged, kicking and screaming, back to consciousness. And unlike the soft, forgiving nothingness of oblivion, reality _hurt_.

She had lost so much blood by now it was a miracle she wasn't already dead. She didn't bother sitting up yet; she took her time, and transmuted one wound after another closed, grimacing as her skin pulled itself back together. It was a pity she couldn't transmute herself some new blood as well; she would be rather weak and dizzy for a few hours yet, before her body replenished its supply.

She looked around, and for a moment could not recall where she was or what she had been doing. The large cleaver and blood-stain on the ground a few feet away from her did not, at first, make any sense, nor did the fact that she seemed to be on a roof.

There was a message scrawled on the ground nearby, written in what appeared to be her own blood. Yet she did not remember writing it, nor was it in her handwriting.

_I want to hurt you, and destroy myself._

_What would you think_

_if you knew how I felt?_

For reasons she couldn't even pretend to know, she thought of Barry, and wondered where he was.

_Ah_. Suddenly, it all came back to her. And with recollection came urgency, and with urgency, haste. She scrambled to her feet, swaying and unsteady, and bolted, clumsily, for the stairs. She knew she was probably too late to help him one way or the other, but she had to at least know what happened.

She had not been unconscious for as long as she assumed – ten, fifteen minutes at most – and the battle which she believed to be over was only just reaching its final act. Barry had managed to cut the thing which both was and wasn't Ann down from the ceiling, and was face-to-face with it now on ground-level (or rather, sewer-level, for that was where he was, though he had yet to notice), laughing bitterly in its face as it dragged the remnants of its web of flesh behind it like a macabre cape.

It was putting up more of a fight than he'd anticipated – not to mention he was weakening more quickly than he had realized. The blood he was covered in was as much the monster's as it was his own. It slowed him down, chipping away bit by bit at his reflexes and attack speed, but as his body grew weaker his resolve to kill the thing seemed to grow stronger. His mania was full-tilt now, and even if he had wanted to, he wouldn't have been able to control himself. Inwardly, he watched his knife flashing through the air and the blood flowing from the wounds it inflicted as if it were a movie, something happening to somebody else, projected before him for his viewing pleasure.

And it _was_ pleasing. His best work yet, if he did say so himself. But then, he had always done his best when his heart was truly in it.

"I CUT YOU APART ONCE, AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!" he shouted, coming at the thing again and cursing aloud when it just barely dodged his attack.

It wasn't crying or begging anymore, at least, but the venom in its voice now rang just as obnoxiously in his ears. _"Oh yes, that worked _so_ well last time! Do you really think killing me will make it all go away?"_

"Oh, I don't care about THAT," he retorted, "I just enjoy WATCHING YOU BLEED!"

_"How vulgar. But then, that's what's to be expected of a butcher. That's all you are, and that's all you'll ever be!"_ It slashed out, catching a hook on the back of his shirt and ripping a long tear through it.

Barry attacked again, and missed. "That's all I NEED to be!"

_"Then why haven't you killed her yet?"_

"GAHH! I don't need this kind of crap from you! WHY WON'T YOU DIE ALREADY?"

_"This should be easy for you, right? Since it was so easy the first time around… Wasn't it?"_

"OF COURSE! Easy as pie! A meat pie, to be exact, which is what I'll be turning you into momentarily if you would just SIT STILL FOR A MINUTE!"

He lunged straight for it, casting aside what logic he had left in the lunatic hope of divine intervention, but of course the creature saw him coming, and reacted accordingly. Rather than dodging this time, it used his inertia against him, pushing him past itself and shoving him hard against the wall. He yelped, groaning as he heard his own nose cracking, but kept a death-grip on his knife even as the world began to swim around him. He turned to face it, and screamed as its hooked hand pierced his left shoulder, pinning him to the wall.

Its face was right in front of his, and he nearly choked on the stench of its breath as it hissed at him, _"If it was so easy, why did you look so afraid? And why is that same expression on your face even now?"_

Barry was hyperventilating now, the whites of his eyes as wide and wild as a spooked horse's. "I… am NOT… AFRAID!" He shoved his cleaver into the thing's stomach, and dark rivulets of blood streamed from its mouth and the wound in its center.

But it did not release him, and it did not die. _"I can hear you panting. I can feel your pulse racing. Madness is a product of fear. Why can't you just tell me the truth, honey?"_

"Don't talk to me like that! Don't talk like you're… like you're really… I KILLED YOU, DAMMIT!" He struggled to force its claw out of his shoulder, or to pull his cleaver out of its abdomen, but both proved to be quite effectively stuck.

_"Killed… not erased."_

"IT'S THE SAME THING!"

_"Is it? Is it really? Then why do you still remember me?"_

"I remember ALL of my victims! You're nothing special!"

_"And they all came back, didn't they? But that didn't bother you. So why are you so upset now? You don't still blame _me _for everything, do you?"_

He didn't answer; he was still struggling to extract his blade. Displeased, the creature twisted its hand in Barry's shoulder until he screamed.

_"What's the matter? I thought you _liked_ pain. Not so fun, is it, when YOU'RE THE ONE DYING?"_

"I'm NOT DYING!" He gritted his teeth. "I'M the butcher, EVERYONE ELSE is the meat! That includes YOU!" With a cry, he tore his butcher's knife free of its flesh, and swung hard at its neck.

At his full strength, he would have beheaded it instantly, but in his current state it took two or three more tries before the neck was finally severed. The body collapsed; yanking its hooks out of his shoulder, he let it fall to the floor, staring down at it with an uncharacteristic revulsion, and almost none of the usual pride he felt in his work. Perhaps this piece of meat had not been worth the effort, after all.

Still, at least it was over now.

_"Barry… what have you done?"_ he thought he heard the head whisper. With an inhuman cry, he dropped to his knees, and began hacking viciously at the head and the body, unaware that the screams he heard echoing all around him were his own.

Meanwhile, Kate had managed to half-stumble, half-fall down all six flights of stairs between the roof and the third basement level, only briefly blacking out once or twice (three times, tops) in the process. She could hear Barry screaming, and followed the sound back to the hole which she'd seen him disappear into earlier.

"Barry? Barry, are you hurt? Can you hear me?" she shouted, but he could not hear her over his own cries. She hesitated at the edge, afraid of taking a leap of faith down into the dark hole in the middle of the third basement.

Around the edges of the hole, in something black, like charcoal, were the following words:

_As you wish, you may destroy me—_

_I wouldn't care._

"Barry," she called, though she knew he probably did not hear her, "I'm coming down!" Though she had no idea what was waiting for her, she jumped in, because he sounded like he needed her to.

She landed on her feet, wavering a little but braced for battle; it took her a moment after she saw him to understand that the fight, at least the physical one, was over. It was not a monster that she needed to be worried about now.

"Barry… I think it's dead…"

The thing on the ground was so mutilated by now that it was completely unrecognizable; Kate hadn't the foggiest idea what it might have once been, except that it was (very obviously) of flesh and blood. Yet he seemed to have no intentions of stopping, despite the fact that there was almost nothing left to chop at this point.

"Barry! Stop!" She reached out to put a hand on his arm, and jerked back with a gasp when he nearly severed her hand from her wrist. "Barry, it's me! _Kate_! I came to help!"

"I killed it," he said simply, and giggled, a horrible, high-pitched cackle which had the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up. "And this time it's NOT COMING BACK!"

"I… see… Look, it's dead, you've done it… I think you can put your knife away now…"

"NO! DON'T TOUCH MY KNIFE!" He was on his feet in an instant, pointing the cleaver at _her_ now. "She's dead now, but she's not erased – not yet – I have to erase her! Tell me, if I cut YOU into little, itty bitty pieces, would you promise to stay dead too?"

"Uh… sure…" Kate held her hands up, but kept them close together, in case she needed to perform a transmutation. "Look, I'm here to help, remember? I _told_ you not to point that thing at me anymore."

"Why not? It's what I am, it's what I do! I kill, therefore—"

"No you don't! Not anymore!" Kate interrupted. "I told you, no more chopping people, remember? Not unless it's in self-defense. As long as you're with me, you're not a killer. But that doesn't mean you don't exist." She didn't know what she was saying, had no idea where it was coming from or whether she believed it all – but it _felt_ right, and it felt like it was what she needed to say.

"But I'm Barry the Chopper," he said, and for once he wasn't screaming it to the heavens – for once, he sounded just a little bit unsure. "Barry the Butcher…"

"Not with me, you're not. You should know by now those stupid titles don't impress me anyway. They never did. To me, you're just Barry. That's all. And that's _more_ than enough, if you ask me."

A Barry that existed outside of the murders. A butcher that did not murder people. A killer that lived without taking the lives of others. It made no sense to him, no sense at all; who was she to say such things, when he could easily have chopped her in two the moment she'd jumped down into the sewers with him?

Prey should not treat a predator like this. Meat was not supposed to talk back to the butcher. And game surely was not supposed to purposefully track down the hunter. It was supposed to run _away_.

But she wasn't running. She wasn't prey. But she wasn't attacking either. She wasn't a threat. He didn't know _what_ she was. She didn't make any sense. _Nothing_ made any sense anymore.

_"Why haven't you killed her yet?"_

"SHUT UP!" he snapped at the bloody mess on the floor beside him. Really, how could it still speak, when it no longer had a mouth, or even a recognizable head?

Kate stared at him. "Barry… it didn't say anything… believe me, I think you shut it up pretty permanently."

So it was in his own head. That wasn't surprising. Perhaps it had all been in his head. Perhaps the whole _town_ was just his imagination, that wouldn't have been too much of a stretch… after all, Silent Hill did seem too good to be true, in his opinion… The thing that had reminded him of Ann, then, wasn't real either – just a bloody mass on the ground, no, not even, just a bloody mass on the ground in his mind… And Kate – perhaps this wasn't really Kate, but a projection of her – perhaps the real Kate had run away after all, like she was supposed to…

"You're not real – none of this is real…" He laughed, or at least he thought he was laughing; then again, he might have been crying, since he could no longer tell the difference between the two anyway. His cheeks were wet, but that might have just been the blood spattered all over his face. He was shaking, but maybe it was just from the cold damp darkness of the sewers.

Then something warm circled his shoulders, pressing itself against his front, so that he could feel its heartbeat against his chest, against his blood-seal. This thing reminded him, vaguely, of Ann, or perhaps just a memory of Ann, but this thing did not smell of death; it smelled of blood, and sweat, and a faint tangy electrical smell he associated with alchemists… but not death. It was soft, but he could feel strength in the way it held onto him.

Dimly, he realized the thing with its arms around him was Kate. And suddenly, he thought, _This… This is real._

She was a little afraid, of course, but she managed not to tremble as she hugged him. She knew he was still holding the knife, knew he could easily drive it straight into her back at any moment, but she believed that he wouldn't. (She hoped, anyway.) If he did, she had no way to defend herself, and no way to heal a wound she could not reach. But she didn't know what else she could have done for him.

He didn't drop the knife, and he didn't hug her back. But she felt him lean into her slightly, and slowly, his tremors subsided, and his pulse and breathing began to return to normal.

Then they heard the sirens, and their sight went dark, and they prepared for the headache that always accompanied both… but this time, the transformation was painless, and when they opened their eyes again, the sewer was still a sewer, but a much less bloody and creepy one, something closer to the kind one might find in a normal town, in an ordinary story.

Kate sighed. "You know," she said quietly, "this is actually pretty gross, what with the blood and guts all over you and all. I mean, you're really a _mess_. And you smell like the sewer."

He snorted. "Well, you should have thought of that before. This actually hurts quite a bit, by the by."

"Ah – right." She let him go promptly. "I think I can fix that, if you can sit still for more than three seconds."

He made a face, but sat down on the ground obediently, and she knelt next to him and went to work on his wounds. He was almost as pale and haggard as she was, but she suspected this was more due to his state of mind rather than just blood loss (although that clearly had a lot to do with it as well, judging by the multitude of injuries he'd sustained).

"Hey, Barry?"

"Yeah?"

She stared at him until he looked her in the eye. "I'm glad you're all right."

"Well, obviously. If I died you'd have to find someone else to fix."

She smiled, for the first time in what felt like a century.

When she had finished patching him up, she used the cement in the floor to transmute a ladder up to the hole above, and together they climbed up and made their way out of the hospital and back to Kate's car. There were still monsters along the way, of course; Silent Hill had not changed, and likely never would. But they had, and this time Kate did not stand by while Barry carved a safe passage for them. She made sure she acted first, killing the monsters as quickly and as painlessly as possible, and then moving on without looking back. Barry did not stop her, nor did he complain – nor would she have let him chop up the remains, had he asked (and, surprisingly, he did not).

By the time they reached the car, which was exactly as she had left it, the sky was beginning to grow lighter. After checking thoroughly for unexpected (unwanted) passengers, they got in the car, and Kate tentatively turned her key, remembering how the car had not wanted to start when she had first woken up in it. But this time, the engine purred like a pampered housecat, and it ran like a dream, as if there had never been a problem in the first place. And perhaps there hadn't; perhaps she had only imagined it would not start.

She turned the car around and headed for the highway.

"I'm surprised you're leaving," said Barry, watching through the window as they left the fog behind them. "We never did find the other people, and you still don't know how it got like this, do you?"

She looked a little sad at this, but when she spoke she did not falter or hesitate. "No. I don't know what happened here. Maybe it was always like this. As for the people… I don't think I could have helped them, even if we had found someone else. I think… I think people who go to Silent Hill end up there because they're caught in their own little private traps. And they get drawn there because it's an escape – one way or the other, the trap gets sprung and you either get out, or you die."

Barry cast a sidelong glance in her direction. "That's pretty philosophical of you."

She scrunched up her nose at that. "Yeah. It's a bit flowery, isn't it? It's just… I dunno, that's the feeling I get. I dunno how else to explain."

"How about this? The town is permanently screwy, and you've finally accepted you can't fix _everything_, and Silent Hill is just one of those things you can't fix."

She hummed. "Sort of. More like, it _might_ be one of those things I can't fix. You never know. But I decided our lives were more important than finding out for sure."

Barry's eyebrows shot up at that. "Oh, is that so? While I can't say I mind, I must say that isn't very heroic of you at all. Are you sure you're feeling well?"

"It wasn't easy you know. Just leaving like that. I'm not sure it was the right thing to do." She squared her shoulders. "But that was what I decided to do. I have to stay alive to keep you in line so that you don't start killing people again. And you have to stay alive so that I can figure out how to fix you."

"Are you _ever_ going to give up on that? I keep telling you it's _hopeless_. You can't fix what's not broken."

The fog was gone now, and up ahead, they could see the sun rising in the east, casting a reddish-golden light onto the welcome sight of the east-west highway that would lead them to – that's right, Liore. She had almost forgotten where they'd been going before their little detour. Had they really only been in Silent Hill for one night?

She smirked. "Maybe you're right, but since when has that stopped me?" She fiddled with the radio for a few minutes, hastily skipping over the white-noise channels and empty air, relaxing a little when she finally landed on a station broadcasting a weather report. It was dull, but for the moment, she didn't mind dull so much; it was actually somewhat comforting. "So… Barry, that voice you heard, back in the crematorium… was it that thing you killed in the sewer?" When he didn't answer, she pressed on. "Because it sort of sounded like your…"

"Where were you?" he interrupted.

She blinked. "Huh?"

"You didn't follow me immediately. You took your time. Where were YOU that whole time, hmmm?"

She flexed and un-flexed her hands against the reassuring frame of the steering wheel. "I saw the thing that was chasing us again."

"Annnd?"

"I killed it," she said simply.

"I see. Well, congratulations."

They rode for a few moments in silence. There are some things, they had realized, that should be left to the shadows and the vagueness of memory, that should never be brought out and looked at directly in the light of day. So they left it at that.

"By the way, Barry, can I ask you for a favor?"

He looked at her suspiciously. "That depends entirely on what it is."

"If I look like I'm going to fall asleep at the wheel… wake me up, all right? I've had enough excitement for one road trip, thanks very much."

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8 Commentary<br>**

**The title of this chapter** comes from a quote by the psychologist Carl Jung: "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." This is also meant to bring us full-circle, back to the title of the fic itself (Here comes a candle [to light you to bed]…). This could merely refer to the coming of dawn, or Kate waking up from the "darkness" of unconsciousness, or it could apply to her going after Barry… or goodness knows what else. So many choices! (Plus it was a good excuse to quote Carl Jung.)

**_"We are fascinated by the darkness in ourselves, we are fascinated by the shadow, we are fascinated by the boogeyman." – Anthony Hopkins_**

Oh, yes. Anthony Hopkins IS the boogeyman. But I do love him so. (If you need me to explain to you who he is, I shun you. Go look him up on IMDB.) Hannibal Lecter was the only mortal movie serial killer who ever managed to haunt my dreams.

**_"I don't feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt." – Ted Bundy_**

ANOTHER Ted Bundy quote. Honestly, I am not obsessed with him. It's just when I looked up serial killer quotes to use for the chapters, a lot of his quotes especially appealed to me. So there you have it.

**_I want to hurt you, and destroy myself. / What would you think / if you knew how I felt?_**

Another bit from the Stanley Coleman puzzle poem from _SH3_. No, Kate did not write this… but that doesn't mean it doesn't have anything to do with her and her feelings. Or Barry and his feelings, for that matter. Oh, my, I do love ambiguity and symbolism. :3

**_"Then why haven't you killed her yet?"_**

That, of course, is the million dollar question, isn't it? :P

**_"And they all came back, didn't they?"_**

In case you forgot, this is referring to the Striders, which may (or may not!) have been incarnations of Barry's female victims. But he didn't seem too upset about them – in fact, if you'll recall, he said they were his _favorites_ to hunt down. Clearly there's a difference between them (who had no faces, remember) and the Memory of Ann (which does have somewhat of a face, although only Barry would ever be able to see a resemblance to Ann in it).

**_"Barry… what have you done?" he thought he heard the head whisper._**

The question is, did he really hear it, or was it all in his head? 8D

**_As you wish, you may destroy me— I wouldn't care._**

One more line from Stanley Coleman, because I love him so. This is also from the same poem – I believe it's the last lines, if I'm not mistaken. Again, this could pertain to Barry or to Kate, or even to the Memory of Ann. Hurm…

**_Then they heard the sirens, and their sight went dark, and they prepared for the headache that always accompanied both… but this time, the transformation was painless…_**

One last transition back to Fog World. Or perhaps the Real World… or perhaps there never was a difference between the two in the first place… (Muahaha.) The pain is gone because the struggle is over… or something like that.

**_"I think people who go to Silent Hill end up there because they're caught in their own little private traps."_**

Major kudos to anyone who caught this small reference. This was an indirect quote of Norman Bates, as played by the adorable (and talented) Anthony Perkins in the original 1960 Hitchcock film, _Psycho_. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: that movie is pure cinematic perfection. (And the remake is complete crap. Sorry, but even Viggo Mortensen couldn't save that one for me.) Anyway, the original quote (my favorite part) goes like this: "I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other. And for all of it, we never budge an inch."


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